Jonathan Majors flexes his acting muscle, turns heavyweight

The order came before he arrived. French fries and a glass of milk. Jonathan Majors shortly after slides into a table in the back of the bar at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. On the table he places a small cup off to the side. In his backpack he has pens, a notebook he writes poetry in, a clown nose, the book he’s reading (James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice”) and a speaker for music. He doesn’t go anywhere without Paulo Coelho’s “Warrior of the Light.”

Majors points to the cup. This one he’s had since Yale, where he attended the graduate acting program. It’s one of four he rotates, a symbol of his mother’s long-ago advice: “Don’t let anyone fill up your cup.” And those things in his backpack? Totems not unlike the lucky stones and sticks he used to gather as a kid, he says, “to keep