Presently Jason is starring in the WB television drama "Roswell," portraying Max Evans, a unique and complicated young man who is on a journey to discover himself and his place in the world. The show is from New Regency, which also produces the hit television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the second of four brothers, Jason became interested in acting at an early age, using his creative energy to act on the stage from the age of five. He continued to perform and enjoy the challenges of acting throughout his school years.

Directly following his graduation from Richfield High School (where he was voted 'Most Destined for Fame'), Jason relocated to Los Angeles to pursue his career seriously.

In Los Angeles, Jason was sent out on auditions and was immediately successful, landing guest starring and regular roles for the CBS, NBC and ABC networks. He played the role of Tyler Banks for two seasons on the Showtime comedy 'Sherman Oaks,' as the son of a wealthy plastic surgeon who identified with and thought himself to be an oppressed black man. Foreshadowing his future brush with aliens, he appeared in the TV movie "Alien Nation: Millennium."

Jason was soon appearing on such programs as "Step by Step," "JAG," "Profiler," and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (as Billy 'Ford' Fordham in 'Lie to Me'). He also played a lead role of Dempsey Easton in the short-lived ABC television series about college athletes training for the Olympics in "Push." In addition, Jason traveled to North Carolina and appeared in the role of bad-boy Chris Wolfe for six episodes on the popular WB television series "Dawson’s Creek."

Jason also starred in the independent feature film production "Rites of Passage," costarring Dean Stockwell, written and directed by Victor Salva (director of "Powder"). The film made its debut at the 1999 Palm Springs Film Festival and was well-received and nominated for awards.

Jason currently resides in Los Angeles with his Akita, Ronin. He is an avid athlete, and enjoys all sports, especially basketball. He also has considerable artistic talent, and designed a celebrity Christmas card to support the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

From Jason's Official site www.jasonbehr.com ; thanks to Orion4.

The Character of Max Evans

Max, along with Liz, is the core character of "Roswell." The action of the story revolves around him. Max, in a spontaneous moment of love and concern for Liz, risked his very existence to save her life. He used his unique alien powers to heal the wound left by a stray bullet fired during an argument in the Crashdown Cafe. With this heroic and selfless act, Max was forced to expose his carefully guarded secret -- that he, along with his sister Isabel, and their friend Michael, were aliens. Although they seemed like regular 16-year-old high school students, they were kept in incubation pods after the famous 1947 crash of an alien spaceship in Roswell, and had emerged as six-year-olds from these pods only a decade earlier. Max and Isabel had the good fortune of being adopted by two loving parents, Phil Evans (a lawyer) and his wife Diane (Mary Ellen Trainor), who have no idea of the origins or special abilities of their mysterious adopted children. Max, along with Isabel, loves and feels loyal to their parents and has a sense of home right here on Earth. They have been raised as humans, they have no idea who or what they really are or where they came from, and Earth and Roswell are the only home they have ever known.

Max has always lived cautiously and quietly, in fear of his secret being revealed, trying not to bring any attention to himself. But along with this fear, Max possesses an overwhelming love for Liz, and this love causes him to both be attracted to her, and to resist his attraction to her. He fears the repercussions of a romance - and also, not even knowing what he is, he is unsure whether romance between them would even be safe or possible. Max is the most cautious of the alien characters, but he also has an innate trust of Liz, whom he has loved from afar from the moment he met her.

Max also possess a kind heart that often conflicts with his desire to protect his secret, as when he healed Liz and when he tried to help Grandma Claudia when she was dying. Liz and Max become closer and closer, from their first tender kiss in "Heat Wave" to their passionate intimacy induced or heightened by an alien orb (and the involvement of Nasedo?) in "Sexual Healing."

Their time of happiness is brief, as Max decides to take a 'step back' from Liz in "The Balance" and their lives become more complicated and more endangered toward the end of the season. A new girl arrives in town, Tess, and he is strangely drawn to her. The aliens discover Tess is one of them, and her father, Ed Harding, is actually the mysterious shapeshifting Nasedo. Ultimately Max is kidnapped by the FBI special unit and tortured by Agent Pierce. He manages to escape with the help of his friends, but he has been scarred by this terrifying experience. At the end of first season, the aliens' background and destiny are revealed by a holographic message from their mother. Michael and Isabel are supposed to be together and Max is supposed to be with Tess. More than that, the aliens are some sort of human-alien hybrid reincarnated from genetic material from an alien king (Max), his bride (Tess), his sister (Isabel), and his second-in-command (Michael). Liz sees that Max has a destiny bigger than their teenage romance and she runs away crying, not wanting to hold him back from his fate.

The second season continues to be difficult for Max. In the opening episode, Max's parents have sent him to a psychologist for help with his problems - problems he can't even begin to talk about. The pace of events speeds up. Someone new - Brody Davis (Desmond Askew) -- replaces Milton at the UFO museum and fires Max from his after-school job (but later rehires him). They discover that Nasedo's killing touch deposits an alien element called Cadmium X, a fact which Max must cover up. Michael chafes under Max's new role as leader, and Max -- just a small town high school boy -- worries about his ability to assume this leadership. Congressman Whitaker also causes them trouble. Nasedo is killed by a new enemy - the Skins - and Max is frightened and in shock. They learn more about their past lives and discover a Skin enemy in the form of a human boy, Nicholas (Miko Hughes). Liz continues to reject and resist Max, even though he has no feelings for Tess. Still, the group eventually accepts Tess as one of them, especially after Liz drives Max away so forcefully in "The End of the World." There is an enemy among them, who turns out to be Courtney, a new waitress at the Crashdown - but she turns out to be more of a friend than an enemy.

The four aliens discover there was another set of identical pods that hatched in New York, leading them all to meet punk rock 'dupes' of themselves. Max visits New York City with Tess to attend an alien summit of representatives of other planets in his home system. These duplicate pods are not nice people - Michael's duplicate Rath has killed Max's duplicate Zan. Max finds out that in their past life Isabel was Vilandra and she may have betrayed him.

Max slowly regains his faith, grows in confidence as a leader, and slowly is rebuilding his friendship and closeness with Liz - yet at the same time, he does not want to hold her back from reaching her potential as a person. New revelations come about the human half of their alien origin as they continue on their journey of discovery in the second season.

Character sketch by Jerry D.; updated by MyrnaLynne.

Back to Cast Page