jack huston
Forget family pedigree – it’s leading-man looks and talent to match that has this actor’s star on the rise, as Gill Pringle discovers
Introducing Hollywood’s newest leading man.
The late, great director John Huston is his grandfather, and actors Anjelica and Danny Huston are his aunt and uncle. Yet it was talent and determination, not his notable pedigree, that landed British actor Jack Huston the starring role in upcoming Roman epic Ben-hur. Based on Lew Wallace’s novel Ben-hur: A Tale Of The
Christ, Timur Bekmambetov’s new Ben-hur marks the sixth retelling of the timeless tale of revenge and redemption (although you probably know the 1959 Charlton Heston version best – it won a recordbreaking 11 Oscars).
Huston, 33, realises there’s a lot of expectation resting on his broad shoulders, which are clad in a leather motorbike jacket when we meet in a West Hollywood hotel. Standing 183cm tall, with thick black hair, piercing green eyes and a stubbled chin, he’s a head-turner on the brink of leading-man status. If there’s an air of familiarity about him, that’s because he played Jack Kerouac to Daniel Radcliffe’s Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings, a slippery mobster opposite Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle and George Wickham in Pride And Prejudice And Zombies. He had
a small role in The Twilight Saga, too, and starred in four seasons of HBO’S acclaimed drama
Boardwalk Empire. Yet Ben-hur marks his first bona-fide leading role, his moment in the sun.
Growing up, film was always in his blood – even despite living on a country estate in England, miles away from Hollywood. “The thought of watching a movie was always the greatest thing in the world to me, then I got to witness my aunt Anjelica perform on a set and realised, ‘Oh, you can actually do that in real life.’ I knew instantly I needed to be somewhere in the equation of film or theatre. I always felt it deep inside of me.”
Huston was raised by his mum, Lady Margot Cholmondeley, after his father, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Tony Huston, left the family for a new life as a falconer in New Mexico. “I was three when he first moved and then he came back when I was five. He was in and out. I grew up in England so I was never thrown into the midst of the business; I was a kid. I would visit [film sets] on occasion but I had a very healthy dose of reality and life,” recalls Huston, who was packed off to boarding school at seven and went on to attend Hurtwood House, where his classmate was Emily Blunt.
“I spent my first year at boarding school in tears. I couldn’t bear it; all I wanted was to go home,” he says. “It was rough, but then I met my best friends in the world and they’re still my best friends; as close as brothers. It gave me a lot of independence, hence why I was able to just get up and go to America. It gave me that drive.”
That early experience has led him to keep his own young family close; he has a daughter, Sage, three, and a six-month-old son, Cypress, with his girlfriend, American model Shannan Click. “My favourite thing in the world is to be at home with my kids,” he says. The couple first met at a party in New York 10 years ago before getting together in 2011. “We were either on different routes or with someone else, but I was always madly in love with her and then finally we got to take it a bit further. She’s amazing.”
It was after a gap year in Australia that he decided to get serious about drama. “I went with a couple of friends and we got an old beat-up ute and drove around everywhere. We worked on a ship for a time, went skydiving and surfing.” Returning to the UK, he worked on stage and landed his first film, TV movie
Spartacus, in 2004. “A lot of the cast and crew were living in LA and I realised rather fast that if I was going to make a real go of [acting], I needed to pull myself out of the comfort of living with all my friends and family. Five days later, I was on a plane.”
He’s called LA home for 11 years now. “When I first arrived, my aunt Anjelica put me up in my uncle’s studio in Venice, where his dogs mostly lived.” He resisted any further family help. “You can’t hold onto anyone’s coat-tails; you’ve got to go and do it yourself, and that means meeting everyone, talking to everyone and doing general auditions for everything.”
He will, however, be working with an old family friend, Australian director Phillip Noyce, on one of his next films, true-life crime drama Above Suspicion, co-starring Emilia Clarke. “I’ve known Phillip and his daughter Lucia since I was very young. His ex-wife knew my mother, weirdly enough. It’s funny in life when it comes full circle.”
He knows his lineage leads to certain preconceptions, not just from his grandfather’s Hollywood legacy, but also on his mother’s side – she descends from Robert Walpole, the first British prime minister, as well as the famous Rothschild banking dynasty. “Thank goodness I don’t have a title like my mother. That would be really terrible,” he laughs.
And, please, don’t call him posh. “My mum would die if she heard me talking about her posh side. She hates it. But I suppose, if I’m truthful, we are rather posh.”
Ben-hur is in cinemas August 25
“WATCHING A MOVIE WAS ALWAYS THE GREATEST THING, THEN I WITNESSED MY AUNT ANJELICA PERFORM AND REALISED, ‘YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO THAT IN REAL LIFE’”