Josh Charles: Success on His Own Terms

As his sleek black Mustang convertible races down Pacific Coast Highway, 22-year-old actor Josh Charles takes in the strains of Ben Harper’s “Welcome to the Cruel World” on his tape player.

Fortunately for Charles, the song is anything but his theme song. In fact, he seems sublimely unaware that he is part of Hollywood’s new breed of up-and-coming actors, including such diverse actors as Ethan Hawke, Brendan Fraiser, Ben Stiller and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Pulling in to the parking lot of a Malibu deli, however, Charles just wants a bagel. “Does that come with cream cheese and tomato?,” he asks the waitress. Wearing navy pants, black boots and a wrinkled shirt tucked in the right side and pulled out of the left, Charles amiably grabs the bagel and wanders outside into the sun. “Pretty sloppy,” he announces with a wide grin, describing not only the cream cheese but also what he finds to be the often tortuous process called “the interview.”

Painful interviews may become a necessary way of life, however. He is currently attracting a lot of attention for his sweet-natured performance in “Threesome,” alongside Lara Flynn Boyle and Stephen Baldwin. Charles stars as a college student coming to terms with his adulthood--and his sexuality. The film, which opens Friday, is a genial yet potentially controversial three-character study about three students who share a dormitory room and end up sharing each other.

The film’s script hit home when the Baltimore-born actor first read it nearly two years ago. “I had just moved here from New York and was going through an experience with my friends there where we all thought we would be best friends for the rest of our lives,” he says. “Then, suddenly, I was in L.A. and I wasn’t talking to these people. It wasn’t anybody’s fault--we just fell out of touch. But it put me in a very disillusioned state about friendships.”

Making “Threesome” has made the actor re-evaluate the importance of friendship. “My dad said to me growing up: ‘When all is said and done, if you can count all your true friends on one hand, you’re a lucky man.’ If there’s one thing I’m learning in my life, it’s that this is really true.”

“Threesome” enforces the truism but takes it a step further. “I think, ultimately, the film is an exploration of friendship and sexuality,” he says. “It’s a movie about about how you have certain people in your life for certain reasons, some people forever, and some people not forever.”

In the course of discovering his own sexuality, Charles’ character, Eddie, realizes that he is in love with different aspects of both his male and female roommates. “There is a line in the film when Eddie says: ‘I felt especially stricken that if Alex and Stuart would have been genetically merged into one person, he or she would have been the love of my life.’ ”

Charles, who is straight, says he had no qualms about taking on a gay character as his first big Hollywood role. Well, almost no qualms. “I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t think about it at all,” he admits. “But literally, that lasted about five minutes. My job is to play many different roles with all sorts of different backgrounds and orientations.”

Co-star Flynn Boyle concurs. “He comes from the reality side of acting,” she says. “He has an ability to be a real person on camera. He doesn’t care what size his trailer is.”

“Josh is a catalyst,” adds “Threesome” producer Brad Krevoy. “He’s like a basketball point guard: He passes, sets and scores.”

Growing up in a middle-class Baltimore family, Charles is the youngest of two sons. “I was the clown,” he recalls. “I was the one who the teachers would say: ‘Josh is so incredibly intelligent. If only he could apply himself!’ Humor seemed to always be the way out,” he admits. “Out of school, out of tense moments . . . anything.”

In 1988, Charles got his first break, a part in John Waters’ “Hairspray,” which was filmed in his hometown. “I had one line: ‘Would you ever swim in an integrated swimming pool?’ ” A year later, “Dead Poets Society” provided his first significant dramatic challenge as the lovesick Knox Overstreet. “It was such an unbelievable experience for me to work with (director) Peter Weir in my second movie,” he says. “The experience obviously opened many doors, but . . . I developed this false sense that this was what acting was supposed to be all of the time.”

He puts his bagel down onto his plate. “Not every movie is going to be a Peter Weir film and not everyone is going to treat his cast and crew with the care and nurturing that Peter did.”

With an upcoming roles in Disney’s “Cyclops Baby” as well as other projects about to be nailed down, though, it would appear that things are slowly falling into place for him. Not that he would admit that.

“One thing I’ve learned about his business is this whole ‘plan thing’--it doesn’t work. It does not work. What I want out of my career is just to work.”

Charles gets up and walks across the street to pick up some cigarettes. “It’s like the Tom Waits song,” he says. “I’d rather be a success on my own terms than a failure on somebody else’s.”