About James
For James Freedson-Jackson’s first film: Cop Car, directed by Spiderman director Jon Watts and co-starring Kevin Bacon, James received a Saturn Award Nomination for "Best Performance by a Younger Actor". For his next starring role, in The Strange Ones by Lauren Wolkstein and Chris Radcliff, James won the SXSW Film Festival Award for "Best Breakthrough Performance".
James was born in California, grew up in the New York area. A fan of Michael Jackson from a very early age, James could Moonwalk practically before he could walk. This led him to the famed Alvin Ailey School pre-professional program in NYC, where he worked for many years to become as accomplished a dancer as he is an actor.
One of the biggest thrills of James’ early life was being chosen by Bruno Mars to join him in opening the 2014 Super Bowl Halftime Show, as one of twelve kids who sang the beginning of ‘Billionaire’ in front of millions of viewers.
On TV he was seen in the Marvel series Jessica Jones (Episodes 8 and 9) as Young Kilgrave: the adolescent precursor to David Tennant's arch villain, and was featured on NBC's Blacklist ('The Kenyon Family') as a young boy with a with a dark past. More recently, James co-starred in 18 to Party by Jeff Roda, and in Chris Merola’s Lemonade Blessing, which made a big splash at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.
Onstage, James has played a hungry orphan in Oliver! at the Papermill Playhouse; Winthrop in The Music Man, and has lent his voice to a number of voice-overs.
James grew up backstage in the theatre; his dad is a producer, and from an early age James loved tagging along to rehearsals, and hanging around backstage. He learned to do magic tricks and some celebrity impersonations, and is pretty good at both!
He loves to ski, hike, and backpack. He’s paraglided off the side of one of the Swiss Alps. He’s great with babies and animals, and has probably spent more time with his twin sister, Anita than with anyone else.
