Josh Lucas
Biography
Josh Lucas was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, to Michele (LeFevre), a nurse midwife, and Don Maurer, an ER doctor.
Lucas' film career began by accident in 1979 when a small Canadian film production shot on the tiny coastal South Carolina Island, Sullivan's Island, where Lucas and his family lived. Unbeknownst to the filmmakers, 8 year old Lucas was hiding in the sand dunes watching filming during the climatic scene where teenage lovers engage in a lovesick fight. It was during this experience that Lucas decided to pursue a career in film which he has now done for nearly 3 decades. Born to young radical politically active parents in Arkansas in 1971, Lucas spent his early childhood nomadically moving around the southern U.S. The family finally settled in Gig Harbor, Washington, where Lucas attended high school. The school had an award winning drama/debate program and Lucas won the State Championship in Dramatic Interpretation and competed at the 1989 National Championship. Brief stints in professional theater in Seattle followed before Lucas moved to Los Angeles. After receiving breaks playing a young George Armstrong Custer in the Steven Spielberg produced Class of '61 (1993) and Frank Marshall's film Alive (1993), Lucas' career toiled in minor TV appearances. Frustrated, he decided to start over and relocated to New York City.
In NYC, Lucas studied acting for years under Suzanne Shepherd and worked in smaller theater productions like Shakespeare in the Parking Lot before receiving another break in 1997 when he was cast as Judas in Terrence McNally's controversial off-Broadway production Corpus Christi. The play led to his being cast in the films You Can Count on Me (2000) and American Psycho (2000). These films were followed by interesting performances in the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind (2001) and the box office hit Sweet Home Alabama (2002).
Family
Trivia
Decided not to go to college in order to pursue his acting career.
Filmed his part in Wonderland (2003) in seven days.
His parents organized campaigns against nuclear power plants and, for his safety, moved 30 times before he was 13 years old.
Graduated from Gig Harbor High School in Gig Harbor, Washington, in 1989.
Older brother of Devin Maurer.
Born in Arkansas in 1971 and christened Joshua Lucas Easy Dent Maurer. His parents lived on an Native American reservation, and they named him based on things that happened there. His birth was so easy that the doctor hit his head on the bedpost and injured himself.
Parents were hippie activists who moved more than 30 times before he was 13.
Was injured severely enough to be hospitalized twice during the filming of Poseidon (2006). First, co-star Kurt Russell accidentally hit him with a flashlight in the right eye during an underwater swimming sequence and the resulting cut required 16 stitches and several days off. The second and more serious injury occurred on the next-to-last day of filming when Josh fell 15-20 feet and tore ligaments and muscles in his left thumb, which required a 5-hour surgery to reattach the muscle and 6-8 weeks in a cast. He is still undergoing physical therapy and rehab to get more movement back in his thumb.
Also has two sisters. One of whom, along with Josh, is in the research and planning stages of starting up Mighty's Fast Food, a restaurant that will promote healthier fare and use of organic, local produce.
Personal Quotes
[regarding moving so many times as a child] I would lie in bed the night before a new school and decide who I was going to be. It would usually be based on someone I admired from the school before.
"I just feel like I really want to be someone who literally disappears in the role. I want to be so strong as an actor that people wouldn't say [for example] 'Oh, that's Ben Affleck.' To me, that's just boring. It doesn't interest me. My goal is to always have the ability at hand where I can be really good, as opposed to, eh, that's Josh Lucas." Interview with Steve Head, September 24, 2002.
(2015, on Undertow) It's a pretty amazing film. It's flawed and dark and troubled, but it's somewhat based on a true story that Terrence Malick had heard from a child. My understanding is that they found the child dead the day he had called Malick while working in a runaway shelter. Malick had worked on the script for years and then when he saw George Washington, he gave it to Green and we made this tiny budget movie I think really is Southern gothic at its best. The character was horribly difficult to play because he's a man who basically kills his own children. For me, it was a real artistic, psychological experience because I was trying to figure out what kind of mind could do this. Trying to figure out how to make that character anything other than what he could've been on paper: a violent monster.
(2015, on Glory Road) It's my favorite film of my career. There's multiple reasons as to why, but primarily it was the experience of making it. I had not only the real Don Haskins, who was a mentor to me before and after the film, but then I had people like Pat Riley as my technical advisor. And we had this group of actors, many of whom had never really acted before. They were basketball players who were doing some acting, and I was put in a position by the director of the movie to be the coach; to deal with them and coach them, and be, in a sense, in charge of the acting from these guys. Every day I felt this responsibility to do the Disney version of that story-the true story is much darker-but we were very much making a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, and that's what Don Haskins wanted. We had a lot of tools from a financial standpoint to tell a wonderful story of a breakthrough in American racial relations.
