'Las Vegas' star Josh darn nice
By JENNY FENIAK -- Edmonton Sun
Very little is real in Hollywood, including the casino Josh Duhamel visits on a regular basis as surveillance expert Danny McCoy in the new NBC series Las Vegas.
"Everything's smoke and mirrors," admits Duhamel, from Los Angeles where he's currently living. "On a sound stage here in Culver City, which is just basically Los Angeles, we built a casino. You're outside and it just looks like some industrial lot, and you go inside and it's like literally walking into a casino in Las Vegas."
Duhamel moved almost effortlessly into the new role after spending three years in New York playing Leo duPres on the soap opera All My Children, a part which earned him three daytime Emmys.
But Duhamel won't be appearing as anyone but himself at the Women's Show this weekend, happening at Edmonton's Northlands AgriCom. Besides a Q&A session where you can get to know the real guy behind the handsome Hollywood face, Duhamel will be hanging around to sign autographs and chat with anyone who wants to stop and say hello.
"There's not a lot to expose unless I wear the thong," jokes the 32-year-old, who is originally from Minot, North Dakota.
"I'm just going to go and be my stupid self and I'm sure everybody's opinion of me will change after that," he says, adding those looking for eye candy will "leave with a different idea.
"I'm not going to do my clown routine or anything and I probably won't wear the thong. It's a little cold in Edmonton still. But I'll just go and be myself."
The public almost missed its chance to lay eyes on the hot new actor, who was one class away from earning a biology degree with the idea of becoming a dentist. Granted, his presence would have eased the pain of getting teeth filled. But after moving to L.A. and being encouraged to audition for TV commercials, Duhamel fell for the world of make-believe and the glimmer of dental school faded away like the California sunset.
The first role Duhamel earned after working on commercials was the title character in an independent film based on Oscar Wilde's work called The Picture of Dorian Gray.
"I was awful, so anyone out there who wants to see it - don't," he says, adding sincerely, "As awful as I was in it, that job helped me get All My Children and from there, everything sort of snowballed."
"As a result of that (first film) I ended up getting a really good agent and manager who helped me sort of transition from the soap daytime world into nighttime TV, which is a much larger audience. So as bad as I was in (The Picture of Dorian Gray), it was sort of the first step in moving forward."
And he hasn't stopped moving since. With the momentum and exposure created by Las Vegas, Duhamel is now landing big-budget film roles, something he had been hoping to achieve as an actor. After shooting the first season for Las Vegas and waiting to hear back from the network, Duhamel earned his first feature-film lead in Win a Date With Tad Hamilton.
"It's pretty good. That one I'm not ashamed of," he says lightly.
There's a week left of shooting on the current season of Las Vegas and then Duhamel will turn around and head to Brazil for a month and a half. He's starring in the feature film Turistas, where six independent tourists unite after a bus accident and are ensnared by a rebel militia group looking to send a rather violent message back to the United States.
"It's a thriller more than anything," Duhamel says of his newest project. "I wanted to do something like this, where it wasn't so glossy, larger than life."
As unreal as Hollywood truly is, it's nice to see someone maintain a genuine sense of self and even nicer to see them hook up with an equally bona fide individual. Duhamel is currently dating Fergie, singer for the urban funk band the Black Eyed Peas, who found fame through the back door when the group picked her out of the audience at one of their concerts.
"She's a very sweet, talented, talented girl," he says, "but we won't talk about that."
So the talking will be left up to those who head down for a personal encounter with a honest and handsome Hollywood actor who will be onstage at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow. The Women's Show runs tomorrow from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. and again Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and tickets are $10 for the day or $13 for the weekend. Kids under 12 are free.
