About Alex

[Updated 17-Aug-10]

Alex O’Loughlin (34) was born on August 24, 1976 as Alexander O’Lachlan in Canberra, Australia. Sydney is often listed on the web as his place of birth, but the fact that it’s Canberra comes straight from the actor’s mouth. His year of birth also varies, depending on the source, but he confirmed that it is 1976 on his MySpace blog entry of August 25, 2008:

“To answer some of your questions and just so the record is straight I am now 32, having been born in 1976 contrary to what other sources may tell us, which makes me year of the Dragon in Chinese astrology.”

The popular Australian is a lean 6′ 1″ (1.85m) with dark brown hair and eyes that he describes as being  “hazelly-blue, but they change color”. His favorite color is blue. He enjoys the outdoors and loves mountain climbing, hiking, running, riding his motorcycle (a customized Harley-Davidson Evolution Sportster, a.k.a. an “Evo Sporty”, and he also owns a Triumph Thruxton). For personal pleasure, he writes and makes music. He is partial to cigars (especially Cubans) but has now limited them since changing his diet and exercise routine. He has trained in various forms of martial arts and, having had training as a stuntman, he enjoys doing as many of his own stunts as he can. Actors he admires are Marlon Brando, Daniel Day Lewis, Sean Penn and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Alex treasures his family and has repeatedly said that he flies them back and forth regularly for a visit. He has a son named Saxon, who turns 13 this year. Father and son are very close.  “My whole world revolves around that little bloke. He’s the center of my universe and always has been.”

Alex attributes his many talents to his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Among his self-proclaimed “mad skills” is an aptitude for (fly-) fishing, whip cracking, cooking and guitar playing. Since working on Three Rivers, he is able to tie surgical knots. According to Moonlight co-star Sophia Myles, he is good at expressive movement. He also sings (at the very least the Monkey Magic theme ) and is a natural athlete. According to his Linsten Morris Management profile, he is also highly skilled in boxing, rugby, skate boarding, swimming, tennis, yoga and modern dance. More recently he revealed that he is a self-taught juggler:

“I can juggle, I was bored one summer as a child and I taught myself to juggle. I started with ping-pong balls, and then I moved on to walnuts. I can juggle anything.”

Alex has had to face his share of challenges while growing up. The son of a nurse and a physics and math teacher, he moved between Canberra and Sydney after his parents divorced when he was two. Like many small boys, he wanted to become a jet fighter pilot when he grew up, but was told by his teacher that it was an unlikely dream as he suffers from asthma. A painful memory that recently evoked the response, “Always teach children to reach for the stars.”

Playing dress up with items out of an old trunk was a favorite pastime for young Alex. He has fond memories of often donning a white clown suit with big red polka dots.

School was a continuous struggle, caused by learning difficulties that were compounded by ADHD and OCD, and he left when he was 14, after which he held all manner of jobs in a wide range of fields.

In his 2002 article, NIDA Invites Applications for 2003, Frank McKone writes that reading A.B. Facey’s A Fortunate Life when he was 19 was a turning point in Alex’s life.

Facey was a model for a new life, and as Alex travelled, also in Europe, he watched films with an ache which he finally recognised. He wanted to perform with the same commitment and honesty he now saw in so many great actors.

Acting held the biggest appeal and he was already working in short film and fringe theater as a teenager in Sydney. One of the first acting jobs he recalls is being an extra in a commercial, playing a marine. After attending numerous classes and courses in acting and expanding his horizons by traveling the world, he returned to school in 1999 at the age of 22 and enrolled at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. Despite a challenging first year, he went on to graduate from NIDA in June 2002, after completing their highly competitive three-year, full-time Bachelor of Dramatic Art program, to which only a limited number of students are accepted annually.

Fellow NIDA alumni are Hugo Weaving, Colin Friels and Cate Blanchett, to name a few. As a student Alex appeared in a number of plays, including Titus Andronicus, The Seagull, Saved and NIDA graduate/teacher Nick Enright’s Country Music, which was written for his graduating class and premiered at the Parade Theatre in July 2002.

After NIDA

After graduating from NIDA, Alex O’Loughlin began his career in Australian television and film productions before relocating to Los Angeles early 2005 to find more work. His Aussie TV credits include roles in BlackJack: Sweet Science, episode 4 of the television series Love Bytes (which can be found on YouTube) and the 2005 acclaimed mini-series The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant.

Alex landed his first major feature film role in the charming 2005 Australian movie Oyster Farmer, in which he portrayed Jack Flange, a 24-year-old who moves from the city to find work in a remote and quirky community of oyster farmers in order to be closer to his sister.

He went on to make the action/horror flick Man-Thing and as the psychopath Michael Carter, he force-feeds obese women in the 2005 thriller FEED that many will find disturbing, or fascinating and darkly comical. FEED is a movie that Alex co-produced and that was based on an idea of his and Patrick Thompson’s, his co-star.

That same year he was invited to audition for the role of James Bond in Casino Royale. After meeting director Martin Campbell in LA to discuss what he initially thought would be the role of the villain or another character, Alex was flown to London to shoot three audition scenes at Pinewood Studios.

“Picture it! Picture it! It’s James Bond, need I say more?”

The role went to Daniel Craig and Alex admitted in August 2005 that he never expected to get the part as he considered himself too young. “I think in five years I’ll be a good Bond”, he mused in late 2007. With the “big, wonderful journey” behind him, he laughed off the bruised ego in typical Alex fashion. “But I’m afraid it killed my mother. She always thought I’d be a great Bond.”

After adding a 2005 Australian Film Institute nomination to his belt for Best Lead Actor in Television for his role as Will Bryant in Mary Bryant as well as a Silver Logie nomination for the same in 2006, Alex O’Loughlin landed a small role in 2006 as half of the kissing couple in the opening credits of The Holiday, which marks his debut in a US production. After playing Marcus Bohem in The Invisible, he returned to television in April 2007 as Det. Kevin Hiatt in seven episodes of the acclaimed US drama series The Shield.

In the heartwarming 2007 movie August Rush, Alex portrayed the musician Marshall Connelly, the brother of Jonathan Rhys Myers’ character and got to play his own guitar. Alex originally auditioned for the lead role; however, as a well-known name was required, it went to Rhys Myers instead. Nevertheless, the role of Marshall was expanded especially for him.

Alex explains in an October 2008 interview with Hollywood the Write Way,

“August Rush was a wonderful experience for me. I read the script all the way through while I was shooting The Invisible and I loved it and I read it again. I knew I had to be part of that film. I put down 2 tests at a studio in Vancouver. I played guitar and sang a couple of songs and did a few dialog scenes. That was all actually for the lead role that Jonathan Rhys Meyers ended up playing. I spoke to the director, Kirsten Sheridan and she said that they needed a known name for the role but she would love to give me the role of Marshall. She re-wrote the character, she pumped that role up because it was a much smaller role in the beginning. We all lived together in NY and I had never lived in NY before so it was one of the greatest times of my life.”

“A Great Way to Blow out the Cobwebs”

The CBS television series Moonlight premiered on September 28, 2007 following a total cast change (with the exception of Alex) after the initial and unaired pilot was nixed. As the charming private investigator and angsty vampire-with-scruples Mick St. John, Alex and the talented cast went on to win the hearts of millions of viewers in the US alone, despite challenges such as a writers’ strike that forced the show into a three-month hiatus at the cost of five episodes and regularly changing show runners in the background. Winning the People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV Drama in January 2008 (Moonlight logged over 10 million votes) and well publicized fan-driven campaigns, however, failed to convince CBS to proceed with a second season and the network announced the cancellation of the popular show on May 13, 2008.

Alex remembers the last day of filming, which, according to the production’s call sheet was Saturday, April 26. It was the final day of a 9-day shoot for Moonlight‘s episode 16, Sonata and it involved the downtown crash scene with the prisoner transport van.

“I kind of blocked it from my memory a bit. The last few days kind of string together for me. They were very busy and we were shooting like mad, finishing at all hours of the morning. The sun would come up and we had been there for 18, 19, 20 hours. The end of the last day everyone was kind of dragging themselves to their cars and leaving to go home and get some sleep. I wish I could tell you it was a little more poetic but we believed that we were coming back. It was sad.”

CBS was smart enough to retain Alex with a one-year holding deal that offered him the opportunity to work out ideas for a new television series. He is known to have been collaborating with Simon Mirren, head writer for Criminal Minds, the hit show on which Alex guest starred as a serial killer in an episode titled The Big Wheel. Alex explains: “I hadn’t worked for like 10 months, so I thought it would be a great way to blow out the cobwebs.”

The Big Wheel aired in the US on April 29, 2009 and was very well received by fans and critics alike.

On March 12, 2009, the news leaked that he had won the lead role in a pilot for Three Rivers, playing a staff surgeon on the show that is centered on organ transplantation in a Pittsburgh-set hospital.  Shooting took place in Pittsburgh late March – early April 2009. CBS announced that Three Rivers was picked up for their Fall-Winter 2009-2010 schedule on May 20, 2009 during their upfront presentation in New York City.

After listening to feedback from critics and medical experts, CBS built an ultra-modern hospital set at Paramount Studios in Hollywood and re-shot and re-worked the first episode of the initial order of thirteen. Although Alex did return to Pittsburgh for some location filming in August, the bulk of the show was produced in Hollywood. The series premiered on October 4, 2009 at 9/8C, but sadly only eight episodes were aired when CBS took the show off its schedule. Despite reports that the show was “on hiatus”, Alex blogged on November 30, “today I was informed that Three Rivers would soon draw to an end”. Although filming for the remaining episodes was completed by December 15, the network was not been forthcoming about their plans for airing the remaining episodes. CBS Entertainment President, Nina Tassler, confirmed during the Television Critics Association Press Tour in January 2010 that Three Rivers had indeed been cancelled.

Leveraging Three Rivers and his increasing popularity to support the organ donation cause, Alex completed the training for his Donate Life America ambassadorship in October 2009. He is also an official organ, eye and tissue donor. “I now have the chance to give the gift of life, which I believe is the greatest gift of all,” he blogged on MySpace. Despite the fate of Three Rivers, Alex has confirmed that he will continue his relationship with Donate Life America and he was honored and thrilled to receive the first Donate Life Hollywood Person of the Year Award on June 11, 2010 for his contribution to the cause.

Alex completed his work on Joel Silver’s Antarctica-set action thriller Whiteout prior to taking on Moonlight‘s punishing schedule in 2007. The movie was released on September 11, 2009 in the US.

In July 2009, he wrapped The Back-up Plan, his first major US feature film, a romantic comedy in which he co-stars opposite Jennifer Lopez. The film opened in North America on April 23, 2010.

“Book ‘Em, Danno”

Shortly after completing the last episode of Three Rivers, Alex went home to Australia for Christmas to rest and consider his career options. Mid January, Twitter tweets spawned internet rumors linking him to CBS’s remake of Hawaii Five-0 and Michael Ausiello posted on January 17 that Alex was in talks with the network about a lead role. It was not until February 10 that The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that Alex had agreed to portray Steve McGarrett. In American Way magazine, he later explained the delay:

“It was a lengthy negotiation process. It was important to me that the integrity of the original show be maintained. I’m excited about the creative team behind the project, and I think it’s going to be a fresh and fun revamp of the show.”

Not unexpectedly, the announcement coincided with the commencement of his promotional activities for The Back-up Plan.

Shooting for the pilot episode of the new show began on Monday, March 8 and was completed on Saturday, March 27. No one was surprised, but the fans were nevertheless elated when CBS announced on May 19 that Hawaii Five-0 will return to television in a modernized format in the fall. The show premieres on CBS on Monday, September 20 at 10 pm.

Alex has participated in Australian commercials for Libra Tampons (2003) as well as for Toyota and Mitsubishi (all can be viewed on YouTube).  In 2006 he appeared in a Supima Cotton print ad campaign.

He resides in Los Angeles when he is not filming on Oahu.

Fans are welcome to send mail to Alex via the Hawaii Five-0 production office.

See also: Others on Alex and Alex On…

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