Keean Johnson

Keean Johnson is an American actor born on approximately October 25, 1996, in Boulder, Colorado. His father is British and his mother is American-Chilean, and he has a younger brother named Cade Johnson. Johnson made his first professional appearance at age 11 at the Denver Center for Performing Arts in the play Plainsong. Around the same time, casting director Nora Brennan selected him for the Broadway musical Billy Elliot: The Musical, in which he performed from 2008 to 2010. The production won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2008.

Johnson's transition to screen work began in television. He made his television debut in 2013 in the action horror adventure series Spooksville, based on Christopher Pike's novel of the same name, in which he played the lead role of Adam Freeman alongside Katie Douglas, Nick Purcha, and Morgan Taylor Campbell. The series aired on the Hub Network through 2014. From 2014 to 2016, Johnson appeared in the recurring role of Colt Wheeler on the musical drama series Nashville. In 2015, he played Tony in the third season of the family drama series The Fosters. He also took on the main role of Kyo "Ozo" Ozonaka in the second season of the teen drama web series Guidance, released in late 2016. Johnson later appeared in the first season of Euphoria, playing the recurring role of Daniel, a series based on an Israeli miniseries of the same name. In 2023, he was cast as Vernon Howell in the Showtime crime drama miniseries Waco: The Aftermath, developed by John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle, which premiered in the first half of that year.

Johnson made his feature film debut in the 2016 comedy-drama Heritage Falls, playing Markie Fitzpatrick opposite David Keith. His breakout film role came in 2019 when he was cast as Hugo in the cyberpunk action film Alita: Battle Angel, directed by Robert Rodriguez and based on Yukito Kishiro's manga series Gunnm, starring alongside Rosa Salazar. The film had its world premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on January 31, 2019. That same year, Johnson starred in the drama film Low Tide alongside Jaeden Martell, Alex Neustaedter, and Kristine Froseth, directed by Kevin McMullin. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in the first half of 2019 and received a theatrical release later that year. Also in 2019, Johnson appeared in the horror thriller We Summon the Darkness, directed by Marc Meyers and written by Alan Trezza, co-starring Alexandra Daddario, Maddie Hasson, Amy Forsyth, Logan Miller, and Austin Swift, which was released digitally in the United States in 2020 by Saban Films. He also played Chief Aviation Radioman James Murray in Roland Emmerich's war film Midway, released in late 2019.

In 2020, Johnson appeared in the historical drama Emperor, directed by Mark Amin and starring Dayo Okeniyi, James Cromwell, Kat Graham, and Bruce Dern, in which he played Rufus Kelly. That same year he appeared in RZA's heist film Cut Throat City, released by Well Go USA Entertainment. Johnson then starred in the romantic comedy-drama The Ultimate Playlist of Noise, directed by Bennett Lasseter and co-starring Madeline Brewer, which was released in early 2021.