Profile: Logan Lerman
In Indignation, a 24-year-old star becomes a passion player
Logan Lerman is not your typical child actor who turns out to have adult career in the movies. He grew up in Beverly Hills, nabbing small roles, and broke out at 17, starring in the teen fantasy adventure Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010). Becoming a teen idol was not part of Lerman’s plan, however. “Growing up here and being surrounded by the industry and the Hollywood culture makes it kind of easy to see what is artificial about the lifestyles of Hollywood people,” he says.
Instead, Lerman wanted to hone his craft and learn about moviemaking. He took on challenging roles. He played the lead, Charlie, in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), an Independent Spirit Award and People’s Choice Award winner. It’s the story of a shy high-schooler who is brought out of his shell by making bohemian friends, played stunningly by Ezra Miller and Emma Watson, with whom Lerman shared a Best Kiss nomination from the MTV Movie Awards. Lehman’s Charlie was the heart of the film, and the sensitivity that he brought to the part would become his calling card.
He joined the cast of Noah (2014), Darren Aronofsky’s unusual biblical epic, playing Ham, the contentious son of the ark-obsessed Noah (Russell Crowe). And he went mano a mano with Brad Pitt in the World War II drama Fury (2014)—playing a frail college student who is drafted without training into armed combat in Germany with a jaded tank crew—which won a National Board of Review award and critical praise.
Then James Schamus, the legendary producer and screenwriter behind The Ice Storm and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, decided to adapt Philip Roth’s novel Indignation to film as his directorial debut. Lerman was a natural choice for the Roth-like lead, a Jewish kid from Newark, New Jersey, who goes to a conservative midwestern college in the repressive 1950s and falls in love with a dangerously crazy young woman (played by Sarah Gadon). “There are a few things in Logan that I just knew immediately fit the bill for Marcus Messner,” Schamus says. “One is the combination of innocence and intelligence, the earnestness, the curiosity, the sense of exploration, openness and vulnerability. And he brings that to every scene.”
And some of the scenes are extraordinary: Marcus confronting and breaking down in an interview with the college’s dean, played by the legendary Steppenwolf actor and playwright Tracy Letts. Marcus being dressed down by his mother (Linda Emond, a Broadway powerhouse) who harangues him about dating a girl that could ruin his life. Indignation now playing in theaters, and Lerman, who was also an executive producer of the film, is bound to knock out his former teen fans and gain a whole new following in the role.
He’s in a pretty fortunate place for a 24-year-old. “I feel creatively free,” he says. “I don’t feel like I’m tied down to work in order to maintain a lifestyle. I’d like to have the freedom to create because I’m passionate about whatever the story is. I just want to work, that’s all.”
