Josh Holloway

Josh Holloway’s California surfer-dude good looks opened doors in Hollywood, but he had to shed his native Southern accent before being cast in the life-changing role as Sawyer, the apparently amoral scrounger on the hit ABC drama “Lost” (ABC, 2004 - ).

Born in Northern California on July 20, 1969, Holloway grew up in a rural northern Georgia trailer park, about 75 miles outside Atlanta. His father was a surveyor and his mom stayed at home. Always considering himself a “Blue Ridge Mountain Boy,” his early years may have hinted at his ability to play a shady character: Holloway now admits to shoplifting thousands of dollars of merchandise with his friends from the store where they worked, claiming that the profits from the scam got him through a semester of college. After one year at the University of Georgia, Holloway left for financial reasons and began a modeling career, which led him to travel throughout Europe and North America. During that time, he found semi-permanent homes in New York and Italy and there was lots of drifting in between.

He moved to Los Angeles to try his hand at the craft and his break was to play, appropriately, “Good-Looking Guy” on the first episode of the “Angel” series (WB 1999). He was soon developing movie creds as well. He did an independent film role a year for seven years before being cast in “Lost,” including “Cold Heart” (2001) with Nastassja Kinski, “Mi Amigo” (2002) and ‘Moving August” (2003) as well as an uncredited performance in “My Daughter’s Tears.” While trying to establish himself as an actor, the resourceful former model had a development company in Georgia and a French-Vietnamese eatery in Los Angeles.

Holloway also made appearances on “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “Sabretooth,” “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” “Navy NCIS” and “Good Girls Don’t” before landing his breakthrough role as the oily, morally challenged but still appealing Sawyer, the plane crash survivors always ready to put on price on the items he’s scavenged, on J.J. Abrams’ hit series “Lost.”