Cinema and my social media algorithm had one thing in common this summer: a man called Jon Bernthal. The name may be largely unfamiliar to most, but his face most likely is not. YouTube was full of interviews, and Instagram and TikTok carried an array of memes from his various TV shows and movies. Bernthal isn’t fresh to the acting scene, yet his presence on social media gained him favor in the eyes of fans. On Google Trends, a spike in Google searches for “Jon Bernthal” can be found in July of 2026. Although he starred in two of summer 2026’s highest-grossing films, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and “The Odyssey,” his time in the spotlight can be linked to more than just the big screen. Memes and social media relevance circulating on the small screen seemed to amplify his popularity as much as on the big screen.
Bernthal’s sudden favor over the summer is an example of the new ways fans interact with actors and how actors find favor in the public eye. Bernthal has been in the acting world since 2002, but really broke out in 2010 into the TV scene. This was his most notable role as the best-friend-turned-antagonist, Shane Walsh, in AMC’s “The Walking Dead.” He acted in other small roles, including two of Marvel’s TV shows, “The Punisher” and “Daredevil” as the Punisher. Another notable role includes Mikey Berzatto in “The Bear.” It wasn’t until the release of both the most recent Spider-Man film and Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” that the internet’s curiosity in him boomed.
This increase of attention, caused by both traditional interest in film and the internet garnered by social media highlights the new dynamic celebrities have to wrestle with and grapple with in the social media era of entertainment. Gone are the days when an actor's success was solely determined by their work on film; now it is determined by whatever whim the people who scroll online deem entertaining.
Entertainment has changed from a traditional role of consuming. The judge of success now seems to be determined by how well people can engage and create something in response to or out of the story. Once in the hands of the people, the art or story takes on an entirely different life.
An actor's career, then, appears to be out of their hands. There was no way for Bernthal to know his characters would be received by the public like they were. Neither would he know that his older works would find more love from a newer audience. In an article about how memes have changed Hollywood, the author Amanda Scherker writes about Keanu Reeves' experience: “The image was disseminated so widely that it came to define Reeves just as much as, if not more, than his actual acting career.” Bernthal is another actor who could also qualify for this category. Once the internet takes your creation, what is done with it is no longer under your control. Because of this new cycle of creation, intake, regurgitation and disfavor, the career of an actor is more defined by what the people make of them, rather than the art they create.
Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash
