Josh Lucas (born Joshua Lucas Easy Dent Maurer; June 20, 1971) is an American actor. He has appeared in many films, including Glory Road, A Beautiful Mind, and Poseidon.


Early life

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Lucas was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1971, the son of Michele (née LeFevre), a nurse midwife, and Don Maurer, an ER doctor. His paternal grandparents were Polish.

Lucas grew up traveling the South with his hippie activist parents (who were anti-nuclear activists) and younger siblings, two sisters and a brother, Devin. By the age of 13, he had lived in thirty different locations, including the Isle of Palms and Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. His parents organized campaigns against nuclear power plants. His mother attended Emerson College with Jay Leno. The family eventually settled in the town of Gig Harbor, Washington. He attended Kopachuck Middle School and graduated from Gig Harbor High School in 1989, where he acted in high school plays. He did not attend college so he could pursue his acting career.


Career

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Lucas began his career when he was 19, having moved to Hollywood after his high school graduation. He appeared as a guest star on several TV sitcoms in his early twenties including Fox's True Colors and Parker Lewis Can't Lose, the family drama Life Goes On, and CBS's private-eye show Jake and the Fatman.

Other projects included the horror/thriller Child of Darkness, Child of Light, an adaptation of James Patterson's novel Virgin, a tale of two Catholic schoolgirls who find themselves pregnant under mysterious and supernatural circumstances. Lucas followed this appearance by working with executive producer Steven Spielberg and then-unknown actor Clive Owen in the TV-movie Class of '61, which follows the stories of a group of West Point cadets in 1861 as the Civil War breaks out. Lucas played George Armstrong Custer.

Soon afterward, he made his feature film debut in Frank Marshall's Alive about a group of Uruguayan rugby players who, after crashing in the Andes mountains, resort to cannibalism to stay alive. After a brief appearance in the Patrick Swayze comedy Father Hood, Lucas relocated to Australia to play the hotheaded American cousin Luke McGregor opposite Andrew Clarke and Guy Pearce in the first season of the family western Snowy River: The McGregor Saga. Lucas appeared in all thirteen episodes of the first season but claimed in a later interview that despite the friendly environment, he was homesick for the United States, and his character was killed off in the last episode of season one. Upon returning to the States, he was still receiving offers as high school/college boyfriends and felt he was not getting the age-appropriate roles he sought. While working with George C. Scott on a TV-movie from the Heat of the Night series, Scott told him he needed to take acting lessons and develop his talent for both stage and screen. Shortly thereafter, he departed Hollywood and moved to New York City, where he studied privately with various acting coaches.

The second part of his career began with a lead role in the British rowing film True Blue (released in the US as Miracle at Oxford), in which he played a hotshot Navy rower who was recruited along with three other Americans to help Oxford win its annual boat race with Cambridge. He followed this with relatively small roles in the dramas Minotaur and Harvest. He took his first stab at comedy in The Definite Maybe, in which he played a recent college graduate who gets fired from his job and schemes with an old friend to purchase a house in the Hamptons.

He appeared as an American businessman in Jule Gilfillan's romantic comedy/drama Restless. He also appeared in an Off-Broadway production of Terrence McNally's controversial Corpus Christi, a re-telling of the Passion, with the Jesus character (named Joshua) and his disciples all being gay. Lucas played the role of Judas as a gay predator, a role he'd later recreate as doomed club owner Darby Reese in the suspense thriller The Deep End. Right before the play was to open, Lucas was mugged and beaten on his way to the theater for dress rehearsal. He played the role of Judas with bloody bandages across his broken nose and black eyes. The audience thought the bandages were part of the play. Following a series of operations to reset his nose, he began gathering larger roles in films like American Psycho, The Weight of Water, Session 9, The Dancer, When Strangers Appear, and You Can Count on Me.

One of Lucas' first feature roles was playing Jace "Flash" Dillon in the cinematic PC flight simulator Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger.[5]

Lucas gained mainstream exposure after his roles in Sweet Home Alabama, A Beautiful Mind, and as Glenn Talbot in Hulk. He later gained success in leading roles in movies such as Glory Road, Poseidon, and Stealth. In Glory Road, he starred as legendary basketball coach Don Haskins, a role for which he gained 40 lb (18 kg).

His next project was Boaz Yakin’s Death in Love. Peacock is another film he starred in. Lucas starred in the 2009 Ridley Scott-produced Tell-Tale, a film based on the short story Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. Earlier that year, Lucas was seen on stage in the off-Broadway run of Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell. Lucas also completed his second collaboration with documentary film legend Ken Burns, after being involved in Burns’ The War. Lucas' other documentary work includes Operational Homecoming, Trumbo, and the Los Angeles Film Festival Audience Award-winning Resolved. In February 2010 he was cast in the Anders Anderson thriller Stolen the single father of a mentally challenged boy, starring alongside Rhona Mitra and Jon Hamm; the film had a limited theatrical release in March 2010. Lucas also co-stars in the 2010 film Shadows and Lies alongside James Franco and Julianne Nicholson. In 2011, Lucas co-starred with Rachael Taylor in the film Red Dog based on the true story of an Australian Kelpie. Lucas won a Inside Film Award for his role. He is starring in the NBC television show, The Firm, which takes place ten years after the novel it is based on, by John Grisham.

Lucas is also an owner and promoter of the company Filthy Food with friends Marc and Daniel Singer.


Personal life

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Lucas resides in New York City. He also owns a house in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, California.

A YouthAIDS Ambassador, Lucas "first joined the YouthAIDS team when he shot the ALDO HIV/AIDS awareness campaign in April, 2005. Soon after, he officially accepted his role as a YouthAIDS Ambassador at the YouthAIDS 2005 Gala, Faces of Africa. HIV/AIDS prevention is particularly important to him as his mother 'has made a career counseling young men and women with the hopes of educating them about the ravaging and often deadly effects of this too common and easily preventable disease.'"

Lucas supported Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, volunteering to help potential voters register at colleges in Pennsylvania. Lucas knocked on doors and phone banked, wearing an Obama shirt for 45 days. He was also in Denver, Colorado for the 2008 Democratic National Convention with a group of actors called the Creative Coalition.

On Jimmy Kimmel Live on July 16, 2009, he said he was an avid fan of the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League, even joining the Bills Backers of LA.


Filmography

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1993    Snowy River: The McGregor Saga
1993    Alive
1996    True Blue
1998    Restless
2000    You Can Count on Me
2000    American Psycho
2000    The Weight of Water
2001    Session 9
2001    The Deep End
2001    When Strangers Appear
2001    A Beautiful Mind
2002    Sweet Home Alabama
2003    Hulk
2003    Secondhand Lions
2003    Wonderland
2004    Around the Bend
2004    Undertow
2005    Stealth
2005    An Unfinished Life
2006    Glory Road
2006    Will & Grace
2006    Poseidon
2007    The War
2008    Death in Love
2008    T Takes : Room 115
2008    Management
2009    The National Parks: America's Best Idea
2009    Tell-Tale
2009    Stolen
2009    Peacock
2009    PoliWood
2010    Shadows and Lies
2010    Little Murder
2010    Life as We Know It
2010    Daydream Nation
2011    The Lincoln Lawyer
2011    Red Dog
2011    J. Edgar
2012    Big Sur
2012    The Firm

Izvor: Wikipedia

Džoš Lukas: Gluma je život nomada

Roman Džona Grišama „Firma“ najduže je bio na bestseler listi „Njujork tajmsa“ od svih knjiga jednog od najpopularnijih pisaca planete. Koju godinu kasnije (1993), snimljen je hit film s Tomom Kruzom u glavnoj ulozi, koji je još više doprineo popularnosti priče o briljantnom mladom advokatu Miču Mekdiru, čiji život preokreće kontakt sa agentom FBI.

Izneverenih očekivanja, razočaran u sliku svoje firme i poslove kojima se bavi, on se upušta u neizvesnu igru s moćnim podlacima...

A sada, još 19 godina kasnije, i to 19. februara, serija zasnovana na Grišamovom romanu stigla je na kablovski kanal ADžN, gde se (nedeljom u 20.10) nastavlja priča o Miču i njegovoj porodici. Sve se događa deceniju posle događaja iz filma. Ovog puta, glavni je Džoš Lukas (1971), američki glumac i producent, poznat po filmovima „Slatki dom Alabama“, „Advokat iz Linkolna“, „Posejdon“, „Put slave“,

„Nevidljivi“...

- To su sada sasvim drugi ljudi. Mnogo su paranoičniji, nisu više tako mladi, bezbrižni i - više nije čitav život pred njima. Ljući su, bešnji, na neki način slomljeni. Mič je završio Harvard, bio je srećan, i zaista je mislio da će mu život pružiti mnogo i da će sve biti divno. Ispostavilo se, deset godina kasnije, da neće - počinje ekskluzivnu priču za „Novosti“ Džoš Lukas.

* U „Firmi“ ste izrasli u odličnog advokata, ali i čoveka kome je porodica veoma važna. Jeste li se vezali za Miča? Nije malo 22 epizode, (tek) za početak?

- Apsolutno razumem njegovu ranjivost i vezanost za ćerku i ženu, razumem njegovu želju da svima učini život ugodnim. Mogu da shvatim da maltene želi da mu bude dosadno, jer i ja sam, čini mi se, prihvatio ovu ulogu u seriji ne bih li se malo skrasio. Jer, glumački život je nomadski život. Uvek ste na nekom novom mestu, uvek u nekom ludom pokretu. Naravno, naš posao ima i glamuroznu stranu, ali taj nomadski životni stil vam ne dozvoljava da sopstveni život držite pod kontrolom.

* Pripremajući se za ulogu, kako ste „ušli“ u tih deset godina, koliko je Mič bio pod zaštitom?

- Nisam bio opterećen filmom ili knjigom, jer su sada Mič i njegova supruga potpuno sveži likovi. Ipak, te godine koje su proveli u programu zaštite svedoka mnogo su uticale na njih. Promenili su se, postali depresivniji i paranoični. Plaše se za ćerkin život. Potpuno su prestravljeni. To je postao njihov način života. A, kad ste jednom „oštećeni“, retko šta može da vas vrati u normalu.

* Da li ste postali „porodica“ i sa ljudima sa snimanja „Firme“?

- Džulijet Luis mi je najdraža glumica na svetu! I kada su mi rekli da će ona igrati moju seksi sekretaricu, naterao sam ljude oko mene da me uštinu da budem siguran da ne sanjam. Mnoge glumce nisam poznavao pre serije, ali sada svi zaista sjajno sarađujemo.

* Da li se nešto u vašem životu promenilo otkad ste „postali“ Mič?

- Shvatio sam da postoji velika razlika između onoga što mislite da je važno i onoga što drugi od vas žele. Ljudi žele zabavu, akciju, ljubav..., da sve to pomešano vide u jednoj seriji, a to im televizija poslednjih godina i pruža. Došlo je teško vreme za film. Postoje fantastična ostvarenja koja ne mogu da nađu svoje mesto na tržištu i propadaju.

* Znači li to da ćemo vas ubuduće češće gledati u serijama nego u filmovima?

- To stvarno ne znam. Voleo bih da radim više, ali rad na seriji vam ne ostavlja mnogo slobodnog vremena. Malo odmora na leto i to je sve. Voleo bih da „uronim“ i u neki novi film, ali mislim da nemam vremena za to. Već sada sam umoran, jer je snimanje „Firme“ velika obaveza, 22 epizode, to nije mala stvar!

* Kažete da je glumački život nomadski. Vi ste se često selili s porodicom. Zar se niste navikli na to?

- Kada sam bio dete, selili smo se više od 30 puta! Mada nikad nismo bili u programu zaštite svedoka kao porodica, bili smo u strahu od vlasti, jer nema sumnje da je moja porodica bila progonjena. Roditelji su mi bili žestoki antinuklearni aktivisti i zbog toga su često hapšeni. Ispred naše kuće je svako malo, onako „nonšalantno“, bio parkiran crni automobil sa ekipom FBI ili CIA koja je motrila na nas.

* Pričate o tome kao da je to normalan način odrastanja?!

- Naprotiv! Sve je bilo čudno. Bili smo u konstantnoj paranoji i osećali smo se usamljeno čak i kad smo na okupu. Retko kome su tata i mama verovali. Čudan način za odrastanje, da. Ipak, izgleda da se isplatilo, jer sada znam tačno kako se Mič oseća dok ga igram.

* Da li ste i vi politički aktivni?

- Jesam. Ne u tolikoj meri u kojoj su bili moji roditelji (na šta sam mnogo ponosan). Moj aktivizam je nekako tih, ličan.

* A kako stojite sa sportskim aktivnostima?

- I tu sam veoma aktivan - volim da gledam NFL. Šalim se, mada volim i da igram američki fudbal. Toliko o mom sportskom aktivizmu.

Izvor: Novosti