IN THE EARLY aughts, Jason Momoa’s look went from clean-cut to rugged. But while revisiting his style and grooming evolution, you might have noticed the large scar on his eyebrow that seemingly came out of nowhere. Strangely, the scar appeared around the same time action star started to land some of his biggest roles. Where did it come from? Is there a connection here?
The story behind Jason Momoa’s face scar is more interesting than some action-stunt-gone-wrong moment. It was way more dangerous than that, as Momoa explained to Access Hollywood back in 2011.
“It was crazy,” Momoa says of an incident that lead to the scar on his eyebrow. “A guy smashed a pint glass in my face. I got a little over 140 stitches in my face.”
In November 2008, before his breakout roles in Conan the Barbarian and Game of Thrones, Momoa got into an altercation with a man who he claims might have been going through a “gang initiation” named Dominic Bando at the Bird Cafe in Hollywood.
NBC Los Angeles reported Bando was charged with assault with a deadly weapon (and plead not guilty) for the brawl that caused Momoa to need reconstructive surgery. Don’t worry though, Momoa got some blows in too. Bando suffered four injuries to his hand that required 15 stitches, and he was eventually sentenced to five years in prison.
“[Hair] just doesn’t grow there anymore,” Momoa said of the permanent scar in an Access Hollywood interview. He credits the scar with helping him land his tough, action-packed roles with his new badass image.
“I got called ‘pretty boy’ my whole life,” Momoa told the New York Post in 2011. “If anything, it’s like, ‘Good’. It’s not my thing now.” Clearly, macho Momoa had major beef with the effeminate title, and we get it. Could you picture the same young buck in Baywatch as Aquaman, a Dothraki, or a fearsome chief of war?
While the bar fight and subsequent scar wasn’t something Momoa saw coming, he admitted to the Chicago Sun Times in August 2011 that he had a friend sock him in the face for his Conan the Barbarian role. After Momoa came up with the idea, his friend without hesitation punched him right in the nose.
“My buddy just did it right away, damn it,” said Momoa. “After it was over, I said ‘Dude, didn’t you want to think about it for a minute?’ But we’re guys and he said, ‘You don’t have to ask me twice. Done deal.’”
If a broken nose and large eyebrow scar helped Momoa shake his pretty-boy past to land some of the biggest roles of his career, we can only imagine what he might do for future tough-guy roles to come. The man, like a true action hero, is basically indestructible.
