Isabel Lucas was born on January 29th 1985 in Melbourne, Australia. Her family moved around a lot as a child due to her father’s job as a commercial pilot – they moved to Switzerland for a year when Isabel was 6, then back to Melbourne briefly before spending 3 years living in Jabiru in the Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia. Whilst living in that small village in the Northern Territory, Isabel attended the Kakadu National Park school and her Aboriginal best friend taught her about “bush tucker”; she described herself as a “wild bush child”! “When you’re 10 years old, you’re at an impressionable age and a lot of life lessons are subconscious. Kakadu was a unique experience and I think that’s where I developed a very real connection to nature,” Isabel says about her early experiences. The family then moved to Cairns, North Queensland, where they have lived ever since. Isabel went to St Monica’s High School in Cairns, which she attended until she completed Year 12 in 2003, and then enrolled in the Victorian College of Arts in Melbourne. After being spotted by theatrical agent Sharon Meissner whilst at the market at Port Douglas, she landed her first audition and subsequent TV role.
Isabel initially auditioned for the role of Kit Hunter in the Australian soap Home & Away, but while the producer didn’t think she was right for that role, a new role was written for her – that of Tasha Andrews. Isabel made her debut on the show on Australian screens in July 2003, and went on to receive great acclaim for her role, from fans and critics alike. Isabel admits she was not confident when she joined the show, but the experience, and the supportive cast, helped her grow – “It encouraged me to come out of my shell and trust myself and that everything was going to be OK,” she said. She stayed on the show for 3 years, and her storylines included learning to speak English (her character only spoke pig latin when she arrived), a plane crash, involvement in a cult, suspected rape, pregnancy and marriage. Unlike some soap stars, Isabel was gracious when talking about her role in the show, saying that “There is a lot of pressure at the time, but it’s the best training you could ever get.”
Isabel was now a big star in her native Australia, but craved some privacy. After she finished on Home & Away in 2006 she said that she dyed her hair “dark, dark brown and jiffied off to Europe” where she could stay under the radar. When she returned, she filmed Daybreakers, a vampire thriller with Sam Neill and Ethan Hawke. She then flew to Namibia to volunteer with an agricultural charity organisation, where she “implanted irrigation for vegetable gardens in the middle of the desert.”
After moving to America in January 2008 and filming a bit-part in the TV mini-series The Pacific, Isabel was to get her big break in the States. Steven Spielberg was so impressed by her in The Pacific that he reportedly cast her for the role of Alice in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The director of Transformers, Michael Bay, has denied this report, however.
Whilst steadily working on projects, Isabel has devoted a lot of her time to her charity work. In October 2007 Isabel and a number of other stars, including Hayden Panettiere, were involved in an anti-whaling protest in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan. They paddled out on surfboards to try to protect the whales, but were intercepted by the fishing boats and had to return to land, where they quickly left the country for fear of being arrested for trespassing. There is reportedly still a warrant for her arrest in Japan, although upon attending the world premiere of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in the country in June of 2009, no action was taken.
Isabel’s profile rocketed in 2009 due to the release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Despite only having a small role in the blockbuster, Isabel grabbed the attention of wider audiences. She admitted the sudden attention makes her feel a bit uncomfortable, but she certainly knows how to work the camera, and when ‘off-duty’ keeps a low-profile, spending her time hiking in the hills behind her Hollywood house. As with many young stars, an increasing amount of attention was turned to her private life. She dated her Home & Away co-star Chris Hemsworth until 2006, and dated Entourage star Adrien Grenier for a few months in 2008. She has also been linked to Zach Braff, Jared Leto and Joel Edgerton.
Since leaving Home & Away Isabel has worked on a number of projects that are all set to be released within the next year or so. In August 2009 she landed another big role – a part in the re-make of the 1983 film Red Dawn, in which she will play Erica, and star alongside former Home & Away co-star Chris Hemsworth. Isabel spent a few months late in 2009 shooting the movie in Michigan. “It’s been so diverse – from blockbuster to vamp-thriller to family drama-comedy. I’m lucky with the way things have unravelled,” Isabel says of her quick rise to fame.
Carefully balancing her film career and charitable efforts, Isabel under-took the challenge of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in January 2010, to help promote awareness of the need for clean drinking water in third-world countries. Following this, she returned to Australia to film the musical-comedy A Heartbeat Away, where she was faced with a new challenge – singing and dancing on screen! Determined to keep going between big Hollywood blockbusters and smaller independent character-driven stories, Isabel jetted to Montreal in April 2010 to film Immortals, another blockbuster with an all-star cast.
Isabel now resides in Los Angeles, although makes regular returns to her home country of Australia. She says that she is “kind of in denial about living there. It’s a funny place, an odd environment to live in … but I’ve decided to like it.” Ever the shy one, Isabel is skeptical about the press attention and life as a ‘celebrity’, but at the moment has made her peace with it as she loves the creative satisfaction she gets from acting – “With acting, there is quite a superficial side where it is based around money and wanting to succeed and fame, and that’s OK. But there is another side, which is about knowledge and storytelling. It is about creatively exploring characters and different concepts, ideas and stories. That’s the part I’m attracted to.” She hopes she can “learn to deal with it graciously,” and continue to “stay very separate from all the buzz and hype”. With a genuine passion and interest in making films, and a down-to-earth persona, Isabel’s going to be lighting up our screens with her unique style for a while to come!
Biography written by the Isabel Lucas Online webmistress. Please do not repost without permission.
