Logan Lerman |
Logan Lerman was born in Beverly Hills, California. His mother, Lisa, works as his manager, and his father, Larry Lerman, is a businessman and orthotist He has two siblings, Lindsey and Lucas, both older. Logan and his family are Jewish. Most of his relatives work in the medical profession. His family owns and operates the orthotics and prosthetics company Lerman & Son, which is managed by his paternal grandparents, Mina (Schwartz) and Max Lerman, and had been founded by his great-grandfather, Jacob Lerman, in 1915. Logan's family had left Europe in the 1930s, because of the Nazi regime, and settled in California in the 1940s.
Logan Lerman is a self-described "film geek", having stated that he is "shaped by movies", and that he is a "creative person". He has expressed an interest in being involved in "everything that goes into making a film", including wanting to write, produce, and direct. His favorite directors include Paul Thomas Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, David Fincher, and Peter Bogdanovich, and he has cited American Beauty, Defending Your Life, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as being among his favorite films. Logan Lerman has described himself as "reserved and quiet", "a homebody", and "not a big fan of sports". He graduated from Beverly Hills High School. In 2010, he applied to study creative writing at New York University, but has postponed his attendance.
Acting career
Early work
Logan Lerman had a passion for movies from a young age, though he started acting "just for fun" and "to do something to get out of school". He began auditioning for roles in the late 1990s, and first appeared in commercials. He made his film debut in 2000's The Patriot, playing William Martin, one of the children of Mel Gibson's character. The same year, he appeared in another Mel Gibson film, What Women Want, playing Gibson's character as a child. In 2001's Riding in Cars with Boys, he played the son of Drew Barrymore's character. Logan Lerman has stated that while appearing in his earliest roles as a child, he did not have "any conscious awareness of what I was doing or what was going on" and "didn’t have a good experience".
Logan Lerman |
Logan Lerman had quit acting for a "year or so" in the early 2000s, when he was ten. He made a "conscious decision" to embrace acting as a profession when he was twelve, having developed an interest in the film making process. In 2004, he was cast in the television series Jack & Bobby, playing one of the title roles, Robert "Bobby" McCallister, a 12 year-old "extremely bright social misfit" in Missouri who was destined to become President of the United States as an adult. The show ran on The WB Television Network during the 2004–2005 season, receiving some positive positive reviews but low ratings, and was subsequently canceled, though Lerman won another Young Artist Award for his performance. Lerman has stated that he "started taking things seriously" about his career after appearing on the show. The Boston Herald's reviewer mentioned that Lerman's performance had a "blend of vulnerability and strength," while Entertainment Weekly's reviewer had noted that "Lerman lends Bobby a bedraggled optimism".
Continuing his film work, Logan Lerman had his first starring role in a motion picture, playing Roy Eberhardt in the children's adventure Hoot; his character moves to Florida from Montana and attempts to save endangered burrowing owls. Lerman stated that the film's message is "that you can be any age and make a difference". Hoot began filming in July 2005 in South Florida, opened on May 5, 2006, and won him a third Young Artist Award, this time for Best Performance in a Feature Film - Leading Young Actor (2007). The Washington Post's reviewer commented that "Logan Lerman shows some life as Roy", though his role was "an anomaly in a sea of insipidity", while the San Francisco Chronicle's reviewer disliked Lerman's performance.
Logan Lerman |
In 2008, Logan Lerman co-starred in the comedy Meet Bill, as The Kid (his character is never referred to by name), a teenager mentored by Bill (Aaron Eckhart). Meet Bill was filmed in June 2006 in Missouri, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007, and received a theatrical release on April 4, 2008. Hollywood.com stated that the film was uneven, though Logan Lerman "displays a supreme confidence". In 2009, he appeared in the science fiction film Gamer, as Simon, a teenage gamer who controls one of the characters in a video game played with live human subjects (Gamer was filmed in November 2007). Also that year, Logan Lerman had a leading role in the Renée Zellweger comedy feature My One and Only, playing a teenage character based on actor George Hamilton - depicted as an aspiring writer who, after his parents split, accompanies his mother and brother on a cross-country trip, eventually arriving in Hollywood. Bloomberg's reviewer described Logan Lerman as appealing, with the Los Angeles Times' Betsy Sharkey stating that the character "captures the ease with which an angry teen will use a growing vocabulary to wound a parent".
Logan Lerman |
In the spring of 2009, Logan Lerman was cast in the lead role of Percy Jackson in the film Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, based on the book by Rick Riordan. The movie was filmed in 2009 in Vancouver and was released in February 2010. Logan Lerman has stated that he was not familiar with the book series when he received the script. Regarding the similarities between Lerman's character and Harry Potter, Lerman told an interviewer: "Honestly, my character doesn't have much in common with Harry Potter besides the fact that he's an unlikely hero who's thrown into a huge situation". Lerman is signed to appear in two more Percy Jackson films, and has stated that he would like to star in adaptations of all five books in the series (the second film is scheduled for release in March 2013). Also in 2010, Logan Lerman appeared in "Change the Odds", a public service announcement video for the Stand Up to Cancer charity; the video also featured Dakota Fanning, Zac Efron, Andrew Garfield, and other actors.
Logan Lerman is represented by the Creative Artists Agency. During his teenage years, Lerman and his family had viewed his acting work as just a "hobby" before college; his parents had only become more comfortable with acting as a career in 2010.
Logan Lerman played d'Artagnan in director Paul W. S. Anderson's 3D film version of The Three Musketeers, which was filmed from August 2010 to November 2010, and was released in the U.S. on October 21, 2011. Logan Lerman was cast in the role without having to audition. He trained in sword fighting for three months and wore hair extensions to portray d'Artagnan, whom he has described as "the most different character to me that I've ever played". The film received negative reviews, with Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune writing that "Logan Lerman already has done solid work... but he's a blank slate here".
Logan Lerman |
Logan Lerman has signed on to star in The Only Living Boy in New York, an independent film written by Allan Loeb and to be directed by Seth Gordon; the story is a coming-of-age drama in which Logan Lerman's character's father has an affair. As of October 2011, a filming start date has not been set.