May 15, 2006 by mosaiconline

Josh Lucas finds the depth in ‘Poseidon’

By: Michelle Caruso New York Daily News
Posted In: Arts & Entertainment

In “Poseidon,” Josh Lucas plays the mysterious Dylan Johns, a lone-wolf, square-jawed, tough-talking card shark who reluctantly finds himself leading a band of survivors on a climb through a capsized cruise ship.

The journey is rife with peril, from cavernous elevator shafts and fiery explosions to water-filled escape routes.

In some ways, the movie mirrors the 34-year-old actor’s hard-fought path to leading-man status _ and his own quest for challenging roles has inflicted a few war wounds along the way.

“There are some interesting parallels there,” Lucas agrees. “My career was really uncomfortable for a time because I was not getting work that I thought would be good, or could be good.”

Born in Arkansas, Lucas grew up the son of medical professionals who, as protesters against nuclear power in the 1970s, moved their four children around the South some two dozen times before Josh was 13, when the family settled in Washington State. After he moved to Los Angeles in the early `90s, Lucas struggled to get by on commercials and TV show guest spots.

“I remember at one point, my mother said, `Why don’t you quit?'” Lucas recalls. “Because I was literally in tears about having lost yet another movie role… it was such a battle at that point. I was so angry. … But even if I was completely unsuccessful (in film) for 20 years, acting would still be an obsession.”

Dissatisfied with the jobs he was landing, Lucas left Hollywood in 1994, coming East to dive into stage work. It was, he says, the decision that turned the tide. Getting fed up with small roles “made me move to New York and get my a– kicked in theater,” Lucas says with a grin.

In 1998, a successful run in Terrence McNally’s controversial but short-lived Off-Broadway play “Corpus Christi” (about a gay Christ figure and his apostles; Lucas played a Judas-like character) got him good notices and would set the stage for a film career. He landed movie roles _ small ones, but diverse, and in quality projects: He was Laura Linney’s deadbeat ex in “You Can Count on Me,” a stockbroker in “American Psycho” and Russell Crowe’s math scholar pal in the Oscar-winning “A Beautiful Mind.”

But a combination shot came with this past January’s “Glory Road,” in which Lucas starred as Texas Western college basketball coach Don Haskins, who took an all-black team to the NCAA championship in 1966.

While “Glory Road ” taught him a game, “Poseidon” taught him pain. During the arduous shoot for director Wolfgang Petersen, Lucas tore the muscles in his right thumb, requiring two surgeries, and his right eye was split open when co-star Kurt Russell accidentally clocked him with a flashlight during an underwater sequence.

He ticks off his injuries with laid-back cool, but even though he says it was all “part of doing a disaster film,” Lucas was well aware that a film like this could be dangerous. But characteristically, it only fired him up more.

“I got caught on a wire underwater. The safety people and camera people couldn’t see me, and there was like two inches of breathing room. I got trapped and disoriented, I was starting to lose my breath, there was nowhere to go… when I got out of the water, I screamed at Wolfgang, `We can only do one take, that’s all you can have, one take!’ And Wolfgang said, `Yes, I understand… So, we’ll do it again?’ “And I said, `OK _ let’s go!'”

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