Manny Jacinto

Manny Jacinto's career is the Hollywood story they don't usually tell: the engineering graduate who became a sitcom icon, the sitcom icon who became a Sith Lord, the Sith Lord who is now becoming a leading man — all while carrying, with visible pride, the hopes of Filipino audiences who rarely saw themselves on screen. Born Manuel Luis Jacinto on August 19, 1987, in Manila, Philippines, he is of Filipino-Chinese descent, and his journey from Richmond, British Columbia, to the biggest franchises on earth runs on an unlikely fuel: a civil engineering degree and a hip-hop dancer's discipline.

The family emigrated to Canada in 1990, when Jacinto was about three years old, and he grew up in Richmond playing baseball and basketball, attending Vancouver College, an all-boys Catholic high school. The plan, such as it was, was conventional and ambitious: he earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of British Columbia. Engineering is a profession of load calculations and structural tolerances — not an obvious pipeline to acting, but Jacinto has said the discipline shaped him. Alongside the degree, he was training as a hip-hop dancer, developing the physical intelligence — the body control, the stage presence, the comfort in his own skin — that would become one of his secret weapons as a performer.

The early acting years were the standard grind: guest spots on Vancouver-shot genre television — Once Upon a Time, Supernatural, The 100, iZombie — the kind of one-episode roles where you learn to make an impression in eight lines or disappear. He made impressions. Casting directors remembered the dancer's physicality and the easy charm, and in 2016 the call came that changed everything: NBC's The Good Place, Michael Schur's afterlife comedy, needed someone to play Jason Mendoza.

Jason Mendoza — Jacksonville DJ, EDM enthusiast, professional screw-up with a heart of gold — should not have worked. On paper he was the show's designated idiot, the punchline in human form. In Jacinto's hands he became its soul: a performance of such committed, joyful, full-body silliness that it transcended the writing. The Molotov cocktail dance. The "Bortles!" The sixty-episode slow reveal that underneath the himbo was a genuinely good person. Across four seasons (2016–2020), as The Good Place evolved from sitcom into one of television's most ambitious philosophical comedies, Jason remained its beating heart — and Jacinto, the former engineering student, became a fan favorite and a breakout star.

The post–Good Place years were about proving range. There was a sharp turn in Drew Goddard's Bad Times at the El Royale (2018), a stylish ensemble neo-noir; a season of Hulu's Nine Perfect Strangers (2021) opposite Nicole Kidman; a memorably unhinged run on Netflix's horror-comedy Brand New Cherry Flavor (2021); and the biggest film of 2022, Top Gun: Maverick, in which he played Lt. Billy "Fritz" Avalone — a small role in a massive machine, but a credit that put him inside a billion-dollar blockbuster. He also voiced Scott Denoga on Disney Channel's animated Hailey's On It! (2023–2024), putting the dancer's timing to work in the recording booth.

Then came the galaxy far, far away. In Star Wars: The Acolyte (2024), Leslye Headland's High Republic-era Disney+ series, Jacinto played Qimir — the seemingly hapless smuggler revealed as the Stranger, a seductive, feral Sith Lord operating a century before The Phantom Menace. It was a star-making turn inside a mask: physical, coiled, dangerous, with a fight choreography showcase in the series' middle episodes that instantly entered the canon of great Star Wars duels. The series ended on a cliffhanger — Osha murdering Master Sol and taking her place as the Stranger's acolyte — and Headland had planned three seasons. Lucasfilm cancelled it after one. Jacinto has been gracious and open about wanting to return: "I would love to run it back. I love that character, that franchise, that team." If the fans want it, he says, he's down and ready.

2025 brought the leading-man turn: Disney's Freakier Friday, the long-awaited sequel to the 2003 body-swap comedy, with Jacinto starring as Eric opposite Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis. It was a different kind of spotlight — romantic lead energy, big-studio comedy machinery — and Jacinto used the press tour to talk about what it meant beyond himself. He has been candid about growing up rarely seeing actors who looked like him on screen, and about how representing Filipinos in Hollywood "means the world" — the engineer's son from Richmond now fielding the questions he once wished someone would answer.

The next phase leans into that identity: in 2026, Jacinto stars alongside Liza Soberano in two animated projects from Filipino filmmakers — the feature Forgotten Island and the web series Sun Chaser — a homecoming of sorts, bringing his Hollywood capital back to Filipino storytelling. Off screen, he married Canadian actress Dianne Doan in 2021, and the pair have become one of the most visible Asian couples in North American entertainment.

Look at the arc — civil engineering to hip-hop dance to Jacksonville's favorite DJ to a Sith Lord to a Disney leading man — and the through-line is adaptability without apology. Jacinto never played the game the expected way, and that may be why the game keeps making room for him. The franchises found him; he didn't chase them. And with a generation of Filipino kids now watching someone who looks like them grin through a Sith mask, the representation math has already changed. The engineering degree, it turns out, was just the foundation. The structure he built on it is entirely his own.

The best joke of The Good Place is that Jason Mendoza — sweet, dim, Jacksonville-obsessed — was played by a guy with a civil engineering degree from the University of British Columbia. Manny Jacinto, born in Manila and raised in Richmond, BC, walked away from engineering for acting, ground through bit parts on Once Upon a Time, Supernatural, and iZombie, and then landed the role that made him unforgettable. Jason's innocence wasn't dumb; it was pure. Jacinto played it like a masterclass.

Hollywood noticed the range underneath the comedy. Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) showed the dramatic chops. Top Gun: Maverick (2022) put him in a cockpit as Lt. Fritz. Then came The Acolyte (2024), where as Qimir he got to be the Star Wars villain with actual mystery — the rare Disney-era baddie with a point of view.

Jacinto's career is the argument for patience and range: the sitcom breakout who refused to stay in the sitcom box, the engineer who calculated a better path. Filipino-Canadian leading man, genre-hopper, scene-stealer. The blueprint's working.

Jacinto's engineering background is the perfect metaphor for his acting: he builds characters from the ground up, no wasted motion. The Good Place's Jason Mendoza could have been a one-note joke; Jacinto found the character's enormous heart and made him the show's soul. His post-sitcom moves — El Royale, Maverick, The Acolyte's Qimir — show a deliberate expansion into drama, action, and genre villainy. The Star Wars role especially: Qimir had mystery, menace, and a point of view, the rare Disney-era villain who felt dangerous. Calculated risks, all paying off.