Childhood & Early Life
Josh Holloway was born Josh Lee Holloway in San Jose, California, United States on July 20, 1999.
His mother was a nurse while he father was a surveyor who had attended medical school for two years before quitting.
When he was two years old his family moved from San Jose, California, to Free Home, Georgia.
He has one elder brother and two younger brothers who grew up with him in Free Home, Georgia.
Josh attended the ‘Cherokee High School’ located in Canton, Georgia, and passed his graduation examination from the school in 1987.
The Holloway family was very poor and Josh along with his brothers had to live in a trailer and had to look for jobs at that young age to feed themselves.
When he was only eleven he got a part-time job of collecting the carcasses of dead chicken from the farms around his home for disposing them.
Josh loved outdoor activities and one of his childhood dreams was to become a forest ranger.
He joined the ‘University of Georgia’ after graduating from high school but had to leave his studies after the first quarter of the first year because he had no financial support to carry on and he also lost interest in his studies. But he enjoyed his brief stay at the university anyway.
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Career
Josh Holloway moved to Los Angeles, California from Free Home, Georgia after quitting college to become a model.
After some time his good looks and his bad-boy image started attracting a lot of people and he started getting assignments as a model.
He became a runway model for some great brands like ‘Calvin Klein’, ‘Dolce & Gabbana’ and ‘Donna Karan’ and travelled all over Europe and the United States during the 1990s.
During this time he also acted as a model for still photography and his pictures appeared in a number of magazines.
In 1999 he appeared in one of the episodes of the television series ‘Angel’ produced by CBS.
His next appearance as an actor was in the film ‘Cold Heart’, which released in 2001 followed by roles in the films ‘Moving August’ and ‘Mi Amigo’.
He also got a small role in the comedy film ‘Doctor Benny’ in 2003 followed by a leading role in the Sci-Fi film ‘Sabretooth’ opposite John Rhys-Davies and David Keith.
Later he appeared on the ‘Good Girls Don’t’ episode of the TV show ‘Addicted To Love’, ‘The Lyon’s Den’ episode of ‘Separation Anxiety’ and the ‘Walter, Texas Ranger’ episode of ‘Medieval Crimes’.
In 2003 he acted in the ‘Assume Nothing’ episode of ‘CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’.
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In 2004 he appeared in the episode ‘My Other Left Foot’ of the show ‘NCSI’.
Before he got his acting break in ‘Lost’ he had considered that he should quit acting and enter the real estate market as an agent. Accordingly he got a license in 2009 for the job which could support him and his family when there was no acting job.
Josh Holloway got his biggest break in the world of acting when he was selected to play the role of a con man named James ‘Sawyer’ Ford who sounded like a perfect Southern gentleman in the television series ‘Lost’.
The show which was a story about a group of people who had survived a plane crash on a mysterious island in the tropics was a great hit immediately and won the best ratings for producer ABC for a long time to come.
Josh Holloway appeared in a large number of assignments after ‘Lost’ completed its final and sixth season in May 2010. The assignments were for roles in films, television series, modeling and video games.
In 2007 he appeared in the thriller film ‘Whisper’ and he was also selected to be the spokesperson for the fragrance ‘Cool Water’ from Davidoff.
In 2009 he appeared in a comedy titled ‘Stay Cool’ and was also offered the role of ‘gambit’ in the film ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’. Josh turned the offer down saying that the role was very similar to the one he had played in ‘Lost’ and he did not want to repeat his performance.
He also appeared in the film ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ later.
In 2014 he acted in the lead role in the television show ‘Intelligence’ which was based on cybercrime and produced by CBS but it did not run after the first season.
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He also starred in the movie ‘Sabotage’ which was released in the same year.
Presently he plays the lead role in a sci-fi series ‘Colony’ produced by USA Network with Los Angeles as a background setting.
Awards & Achievements
In 2005 Josh Holloway’s picture on the collectable covers issued by the magazine ‘TV Guide’ was the bestseller among all the other actors and actresses of the television series ‘Lost’.
He appeared on the cover page of the same magazine four times in 2005 and was also named one of the ‘50 Most Beautiful People’ by the magazine ‘People’ in the same year.
He has won nominations for the ‘Teen Choice Awards’ a number of times.
In 2006 he and his team members of ‘Lost’ won the ‘Screen Actors Guild Award’ for ‘Outstanding Ensemble in a Drama Series’.
In January 2006 he was named the ‘hottest hunk’ on television by the ‘On Touch Weekly’, ‘the seventeenth sexiest guy worldwide’ by British magazine ‘OK’ and the ‘second sexiest star in Hollywood’ by the US magazine ‘Weekly’.
Trivia
He was born on the same day that Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin from NASA stepped onto the surface of the Moon.
On October 13, 2005, while he was at home in Hawaii Kai, 12 miles east of Honolulu, they were robbed of their cash, credit cards and their car. They were shaken by the incident but were not harmed. The robber was arrested soon after.
