While acting on Netflix's "The Punisher," Jon Bernthal knows a thing or two about violence and viscousness. However, fiction once became reality several years ago, and it almost cost him his life.
In 2009, Jon nearly killed a man.

In speaking to Esquire magazine, Jon recalled the day he was walking his dog along Venice Beach when a drunk man started following Jon and his dog. The actor told the drunk man to stop talking to the dog and to stop following them, but he didn't. Jon, who previously starred in "The Walking Dead," punched the man squarely in the face, knocking him unconscious and splitting his head open.
Suddenly, Jon found himself handcuffed and speaking to cops at a police station.
"If that guy doesn't wake up, you're going away for life," he recalled an officer telling him. "I knew if he didn't wake up, I was going to jail and my worst side would take over. I prayed to whatever is above that if he woke up, I'd change things, get married, have kids, and stop with the anger."

Thankfully for Jon, the man eventually woke up and witnesses told the police that the man had been harassing the actor and his dog. He was put on three years' probation and he eventually settled a civil lawsuit out of court.
Still, he remembered his police station epiphany, and he is now married and has three children.
"I know now life is more about working things out and heading off that violence," he told the mag. "Extremism and lack of compromise is the enemy of what I want to teach [my kids]."