Oscar talk heats up for Lucas Hedges
He has one nomination and three new movies, but “I still don’t feel famous”
At just 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 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 highprofile dramas: Jonah Hill’s skateboarding directorial debut “Mid90s” (in theaters now nationwide), in which he plays a bullying older brother; “Ben Is Back” (in theaters Dec. 7), starring opposite Julia Roberts as her drug-addicted son; and gay-conversion movie “Boy Erased” (in theaters Friday in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, expands nationwide Nov. 16), based on Garrard Conley’s best-selling 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 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 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 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 says. But during “the three months I made this movie, I had more conversations about it, and it made my world bigger.”
Digging deeper into sexuality
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 coming-out day, but it’s really cool to be honest and tell the truth about my experience.”
Along with his “Lady Bird” co-star Timothee 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 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 says. “Be- cause 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.