Despite Oscar nomination, Hedges doesn’t ‘feel famous’
NEW YORK – At 21, Lucas Hedges already has become something of an Oscars good-luck charm.
The last three films he starred in were nominated for best picture: 2017’s “Lady Bird” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and 2016’s “Manchester by the Sea,” for which he earned a best-supportingactor nomination playing Casey Affleck’s grieving nephew.
But the unassuming young actor won’t take credit for those films’ bona fides, nor does he buy into the notion that he’s “famous.”
“I think, ‘Oh, wow, a lot of people seem to be recognizing me,’ then I go a month and nobody knows who I am. So I’m like, ‘Yeah, everything’s the same as it always was,’ ” he said.
“I still really don’t feel famous, because it doesn’t seem to be consistent at all.”
That’s likely to change this fall, with Hedges appearing in three more highprofile dramas: Jonah Hill’s skateboarding directorial debut “Mid90s,” in which he plays a bullying older brother, which is still in theaters; “Ben Is Back,” starring opposite Julia Roberts as her drug-addicted son, due out in December; and the gay-conversion movie “Boy Erased,” which opens in theaters Friday.
The latter, based on Garrard Conley’s bestselling 2016 memoir, has earned him career-best reviews and a long shot at a best-actor nomination.
Hedges is in nearly every frame of “Boy” as Jared, whose Baptist preacher father (Russell Crowe) and wellmeaning mother (Nicole Kidman) send him to gay-conversion camp after he’s outed by a college crush (Joe Alwyn).
Conditioned to hate himself yet eager to change, Jared endures the program’s ludicrous and cruel methods of therapy, such as forcing boys to play baseball to be more masculine and hosting a fake funeral for a gay man who supposedly died of AIDS.
“When I read the book, I thought it was so beautiful,” Hedges said. “The character was laid out for me like a blueprint, so I was like, ‘I can’t not play this part.’ ”
Hedges was raised in a progressive
The last three films he starred in were nominated for best picture: 2017’s “Lady Bird” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and 2016’s “Manchester by the Sea,” for which he earned a best-supporting-actor nomination playing Casey Affleck’s grieving nephew.
household: His parents are both artistic (his father is writer/director Peter Hedges; his mother is actress/poet Susan Bruce), and he attended a liberalarts high school in Brooklyn.
He started acting in middle school, appearing in “Moonrise Kingdom” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and later studying theater at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Surrounded by creative, openminded people all his life, “I was exposed to the idea of sexuality being on a spectrum at a young age,” he said. But during “the three months I made this movie, I had more conversations about it and it made my world bigger.”
Hedges has become one of the most in-demand young actors in Hollywood, picking challenging projects from respected directors rather than franchise movies.
“Boy” director Joel Edgerton is impressed with the grace with which Hedges’ carries himself as his stock rises, as well as his ability to disappear into any role.
“He’s a blank canvas. It’s a quality that actors want to have and he definitely has that,” Edgerton said.
“Because he’s intelligent, he’s able to shift his energy so you can see him as gentle and quiet, but also brutal and explosive. Part of that comes from his intention to explore different parts of himself.”