Jonathan Edward "Jon" Bernthal (born September 20, 1976) is an American actor, best known for his role as Shane Walsh on the AMC television series The Walking Dead.
Bernthal was born and raised in Washington, D.C. He is the son of Joan Lurie (née Marx) and Eric Lawrence "Rick" Bernthal, a lawyer with Latham & Watkins LLP. He has two brothers, Nicholas "Nick" Matthew Bernthal and Thomas "Tom" Bernthal. He is the grandson of the late musician and producer Murray Bernthal. He graduated from the Sidwell Friends School in Washington.
After high school, he studied at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York and later attended The School of Moscow Art Theatre, in Moscow, Russia. During his time there, he also played professional baseball in the European Professional Baseball Federation (Confédération Européenne de Baseball). He was discovered by the director of Harvard University's Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated in 2002 from the American Repertory Theatre with a Master of Fine Arts.
