Logan Lerman

Logan Wade Lerman (born January 19, 1992) is an American actor, known for playing the title role in the 2010 fantasy-adventure Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. He appeared in commercials in the mid-1990s, before starring in the series Jack & Bobby (2004–2005) and the movies The Butterfly Effect (2004) and Hoot (2006). Lerman gained further recognition for his roles in the western 3:10 to Yuma, the thriller The Number 23, the comedy Meet Bill, and 2009's Gamer and My One and Only. He played d'Artagnan in 2011's The Three Musketeers, and starred in the teen drama The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), and has supporting roles in the 2014 films Noah and Fury. Family background and early life Lerman was born in Beverly Hills, California. His mother, Lisa (née Goldman), works as his manager, and his father, Larry Lerman, is a businessman and orthotist. He has two siblings, Lindsey and Lucas, both older. Logan is Jewish, and had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony. His grandparents were born in four different countries. Logan's paternal grandfather, Max Lerman, was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1927, to a Polish Jewish family; they left Germany in the 1930s, because of the Nazi regime, and had lived in Shanghai, China until the end of World War II. Logan's paternal grandmother, Mina (Schwartz), was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to Russian Jewish parents. Logan's maternal grandfather was a Polish Jewish immigrant, and Logan's maternal grandmother was born in Los Angeles, also to a Jewish immigrant family. On his mother's side, he is a relative, by marriage, of twin singers Evan and Jaron Lowenstein. Lerman has stated that he is a "black sheep" in his household because he is an actor, while most of his relatives work in the medical profession. His family owns and operates the orthotics and prosthetics company Lerman & Son, which had been founded by his great-grandfather, Jacob Lerman, in 1915. 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. 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 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. 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" 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. Continuing his film work, 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. 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). Percy Jackson In spring 2009, Lerman was cast in the lead role as Percy Jackson in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. The movie was filmed in 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was released in February 2010. Lerman has stated that he was not familiar with the book series when he received the script. 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, the year of Percy Jackson's release.