Josh Lucas: with his feet-on-the-ground attitude and quiet intensity, it's hard to imagine Josh Lucas couldn't succeed at anything he set his mind to—be it weathering a storm at sea or fashioning a satisfying acting career. Just don't ask him to sing

Interview, August, 2005 by Christina Applegate

Right now, Josh Lucas's career is a study in contrasts: He just wrapped the Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie (in which he played the ardent yet taken Gentleman Caller), and this month he's a sorely bounced-around pilot in the action thriller Stealth. How does he go to such extremes so gracefully? According to this interview with Broadway colleague and Sweet Charity star Christina Applegate, it's all about finding which element of each role most beckons to your enthusiasm.

CHRISTINA APPLEGATE: Hey, Josh! How are you?

JOSH LUCAS: I'm grubby and soaked in sweat because I've been moving all weekend, which is kind of difficult between matinees. [laughs] But I'm good. One of the great things about doing a play on Broadway is being in New York. I love this city--it's got such incredible energy, and, as you know, to be out there onstage every day gives you another big burst of energy. By the way, congratulations on your Tony nomination--after everything you've been through with Sweet Charity, it must feel pretty spectacular.

CA: It feels good--I'll allow myself that. But I have to interview you now. [laughs] I've never done this before, so forgive me if I'm a little remedial with my questions.

JL: I'll be a little remedial with my answers too.

CA: Why at this point did you decide to come to Broadway and do The Glass Menagerie?

JL: I'd never done Broadway, and I thought what an incredible challenge it would be to do it when I have Stealth, this big summer action film, also coming out. I liked the challenge of tackling those different sides of acting.

CA: When you walk away from this play, how do you think it will have changed you?

JL: For one thing, I've never devoted this amount of concentration and preparation and attention to language. That's such an actory thing to say, but going out and saying those words every night, you start to fall in love with them--they sink into your soul a little bit more each time. My sense is that the more I explore and fall in love with that, the more I will want that in my film experiences.

CA: In my dressing room I keep this dialogue between Martha Graham and Agnes DeMille. My favorite part is where Graham says that no artist is ever pleased--that they only experience a queer divine dissatisfaction. Do you feel that way?

JL: Yeah, I do, unfortunately. After almost every performance I walk off that stage and go, "I hit this, but I didn't hit that, and that was interesting, but what happened there?" [laughs]

CA: Tell me about Stealth, because I auditioned for it and didn't get it.

JL: So you're bitter.

CA: Yes! [both laugh]

JL: Well, you missed a difficult shoot to say the least. We filmed in Sydney, Australia, and we'd get in the car at five in the morning and drive to the set, get makeup and hair, and then put on these flight suits. Then you'd walk into one of the largest green soundstages on earth, and in the middle of it was something called a gimble, which is like a 30-ton eggbeater [Applegate laughs], and on the end of it was the cockpit of an airplane. You'd crawl 30 feet into it, strap yourself in, put on this helmet that pumps in oxygen, and proceed to work for eight hours. The gimble basically replicates many of the things that an actual fighter jet does, so you'd be sitting 30 feet above this green soundstage with a NASA-like computer set up in front of you and with the crew controlling all the cameras and lights and computers and hydraulics connected with it. It would basically throw you around for eight hours at a time while you were doing dialogue to nobody. [laughs] I'd get smashed up pretty badly. I actually got three concussions in one week. It was nuts!

CA: How long did you do the green screen?

JL: For almost three and a half months--I did 45 days straight at one point. The shoot itself took almost seven months. The director tried to break it up for us by switching between a week of green-screen and a week of location shooting, but eventually we ran out of stuff and had to just do green screen.

CA: What attracted you to this project?

JL: I thought there was some intelligence to it, and it just seemed like a good piece of entertainment. There are some interesting ideas in the film in terms of where the military's going, like using computerized planes for everything, including dropping bombs. Also, the director, Rob Cohen, came to me and said he wanted people who are not in the typical summer action genre and that he wanted to try and make a movie that had some intelligence and heart to it.

CA: Have you seen it yet?

JL: Not a thing. Rob's pretty set on me seeing it when it's finished, which will be interesting, since while we were filming, the entire thing was only in our imagination. He'd say things like, "Okay, you have two Russian MiG fighters coming at you from 10 degrees and 40 degrees, and they're moving at 2,000 miles per hour: Go!" And you're literally whipping your head around, pretending they're trying to blow you up.

CA: So basically your next film should be a nice little Christopher Guest comedy where you just sit around and ad-lib.