The charmed life of Lucas Hedges
Young actor no stranger to Oscars and could be in line for Best Actor nom Theodore Pellerin, left, and Lucas Hedges in a scene from the gay-conversion drama Boy Erased.
NEW YORK— At just 21, Lucas Hedges already has become something of an Oscars goodluck charm.
The last three films he costarred 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.
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 says. “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 high-profile dramas: Jonah Hill’s skateboarding directorial debut Mid90s, in which he plays a bullying older brother; Ben Is Back, starring opposite Julia Roberts as her drugaddicted son; and gay-conversion movie Boy Erased, based on Garrard Conley’s bestselling 2016 memoir. The latter has earned him career-best reviews and a long shot at a best actor nomination, some experts predict on awards site GoldDerby.com.
Hedges is in nearly every frame of Boy as Jared, whose Baptist preacher father (Russell Crowe) and well-meaning 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 pro- gram’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 says. “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 household: his parents are both artistic (his father is writer/director Peter Hedges; his mother is actress/poet Susan Bruce), and he attended a liberal-arts high school in Brooklyn. He started acting in middle school, appearing in Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, and later studying theatre at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Surrounded by creative, open-minded people all his life, “I was exposed to the idea of sexuality being on a spectrum at a young age,” he says. But during “the three months I made this movie, I had more conversations about it and it made my world bigger.”
Questions of Hedges’ own sexuality arose when he was cast in Boy after playing a closeted gay teen in Lady Bird. After describing himself as “not totally straight, but also not gay and not necessarily bisexual” in an interview last month with New York magazine, “I got the most amazingly reassuring texts from people,” he says. “I feel really blessed to live in a world in which I am accepted for saying that, because that’s not true for everyone.
“I’m not trying to treat this as though it was like my comingout day, but it’s really cool to be honest and tell the truth about my experience.”
Along with his Lady Bird costar Timothée Chalamet, Hedges has quickly become one of the most in-demand young actors in Hollywood, picking challenging projects from respected directors rather than franchise movies. Boy director Joel Ed- gerton 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 says. “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.”
The young star plays against type in coming-of-age tale Mid90s, a critique of toxic masculinity as seen through the eyes of 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic), who begins partaking in drinking, drugs and girls when he befriends a group of older skaters. Hedges has a small role as his brooding brother Ian, who violently beats up and berates Stevie, but only to hide his own unhappiness and concern for his younger sibling.
“If you’re going to have someone play an abusive brother and you cast someone obvious for that, it becomes very stock and generic,” Hill says. “I was looking for an actor who was very sensitive and emotional, because I felt if that was under the veneer of a snarling, mean person, you’d really empathize with him.”
Having portrayed “a lot of earnest, sweet guys, there was something very cathartic about playing a character who’s … like a voice in (my) head,” Hedges says. “If somebody met me, they’d be like, ‘Oh, you’re nothing like this guy,’ but in reality, that guy exists inside of me.”
Ben Is Back was similarly cathartic for him, although in a much different way. In the film, he plays a recovering drug addict and dealer who leaves rehab to come home for Christmas. The intimate drama was written and directed by Hedges’ father ( About a Boy, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape), whose own family members have struggled with addiction. He began writing the film after the death of his close friend Philip Seymour Hoffman from an accidental drug overdose in 2014.
“That really hit my dad hard and he wanted to make something that would have a positive effect on the world with this topic,” Hedges says. “Addiction is a very big thing in our family and that was the reason why I wanted to do it. I believe that when you confront these kind of things they can be expelled. I don’t think addiction will now just suddenly disappear from our family, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did do some healing for the Hedges.”
Whether it was anxiety or the emotional demands of the role, Hedges says Ben was the first character he had trouble shaking off once shooting wrapped, and he struggled to sleep in days and weeks after. But the introspective actor believes every project is an opportunity to heal some part of himself, whether it’s on screen or stage.