#AlexOLoughlin ……. Friends will be Friends

I think many of us know how wonderful it is to have lived through some hard times with a friend and then to be there to see them recover and succeed. Most of the time we only see the glamour of celebrities, but hardly see the side of them of where they suffer through difficulties and failures with their friends – those people who are part of their real lives.

Untill earlier this year, when we saw the first article about it, we never knew about the close friendship between Alex O’Loughlin and Luke Davies. Luke of course is a writer who was nominated for an Oscar in the USA and received the BAFTA in the UK earlier this year for the movie “Lion”.

This week Luke’s story was told on Australian Television. It also featured some recently taped footage of Alex sharing thoughts about his friendship with Luke.

Luke’s story of redemption not only ended with his recovery from drug addiction in 1990, but also now being successfully treated in the USA for Hepatitis C, all while becoming a sought after writer busy writing the next movie for Tom Hanks.

Of course for us as Alex O’Loughlin fans, the joy of the story is in it that together with Alex we can see one of his best friends, Luke, succeed in his career and recover from a life threatening disease.

Here is the story …..

 

From Luke Davies, Australian Story  By Greg Hassall

How Lion screenwriter Luke Davies overcame addiction to become Hollywood hot property.

The global success of hit movie Lion has made screenwriter Luke Davies one of Hollywood’s hottest properties. But the path to success has not been an easy one.

An unhealthy fascination with drugs in his teens turned into an obsession by his early 20s. He and partner Megan Bannister plunged into a decade of heroin addiction, a terrible chapter in their lives that Luke would later immortalise in the novel, and then movie, Candy.

Megan – the real Candy – gives her account of those years for the first time on camera. Luke’s parents also speak for the first time about their anguish at their son’s decline.

In 1990, after a decade of despair, Luke Davies gave up heroin – a decision that probably saved his life and allowed him to realise his childhood dream of being a writer. Then in 2007 he left Australia to try his luck in Hollywood. After years of financial struggle he struck gold with his script for Lion, winning a BAFTA award and being nominated for an Oscar.

This remarkable story of redemption also features candid interviews with actors Dev Patel (Lion), Joel Edgerton, Jacki Weaver and Alex O’Loughlin, directors Neil Armfield and David Michod, and producer Emile Sherman.

Australian actor and Hawaii Five-0 star Alex O’Loughlin, with whom Davies has shared a house for the past eight years, saw that first-hand. “I watched him struggle financially, I watched him struggle emotionally,” O’Loughlin said. “It’s rare to hear Luke say, ‘I don’t know what to do — this is really hard’. And I heard that a couple of times.”

 ******

Here is a transcript and video of excerpts of the parts with Alex, from the ‘Australian Story’ Episode that was broadcast on 22 May 2017, tilted ‘Candy Man’.

Luke: The initial months or year or two of breaking into the business in Los Angeles was …. was really just a situation of abject failure. At every turn, with every … It was just a hassle and a scramble. Alex O’Loughlin was my really good friend and flatmate for all those years.

Alex: I watched him struggle financially. I watched him struggle emotionally. It’s rare to hear Luke say, “I don’t know what to do. It’s really hard”. And I heard that a couple of times.

Luke: It was like 20 or 30000 dollars’ worth of maxed out credit cards. It was the sort of $10 000 back rent owing to Alex O’Loughlin.

Then he won $80000 dollars with the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for poetry, that helped him to pay his debts and bills. And he got commissioned to write the screenplay for Lion, and the rest is now history…..

But he constantly felt tired and got bad news about the Hepatitis C, that he contracted in the early days while he was on drugs ….

Luke: Life was physically demanding. I was beginning to hear whispers from doctors that this was bad trouble on the horizon and that my liver was in a very bad state.

Alex: I was scared. I was scared that I was going to lose one of my best mates. I remember this one conversation  we had out on the front balcony. We talked about the fact that he might die, you know. That this … that this could be … that this could be a reality, you know. And I was … I was really struggling to process this.

Luke: I got Writers Guild health insurance and that made it possible to get on this new wonder drug that is curing the world of Hep C.  There was a six month treatment in 2015. And exactly a year ago, last month I learned that the treatment succeeded. Now I am understanding how sick I was for the last decade, because now I am feeling not sick.

Alex: I don’t want to say it like, “It’s a miracle”. But what if it is a miracle?

Link to Video:

 

A Big THANK YOU to  Hawaii Five-0 Australia for sourcing and compiling this short video from the original TV program. We know how difficult it is to source something like this and then put it together for everybody to enjoy! Please credit them when sharing the video.

Here are some of the old article posted earlier this year that also talked about the fact that Alex and Luke shared a house LA since 2009 (most probably after his break-up with Holly early that year). Later on they also started sharing the house with fellow Australians David Michôd and partner Mirrah Foulkes, who we know as Ellie on Hawaii Five-0.

A living arrangement that seems to suits them all, as they do not all stay in LA on a permanent basis, but need some sort of home base when they are there.

From “Luke Davies on ‘Candy’, mature share houses, and the magic of Garth Davis” By Harry Windsor 20 February 2017 (Full article in the link)

Question: When did you move to the States?

Luke: After Candy I went to America to have a little exploration. I really don’t know what I was thinking. I thought maybe I’d get an agent or something. It wasn’t a grand plan. In April it will be ten years I’ve been in LA. The first five years were really difficult. I was poor and I really didn’t know if it was going to pan out.

In 2009 I started sharing a house with Alex O’Loughlin (Hawaii Five-0). Then David Michôd, who I had been friends with for some years, and his girlfriend, Mirrah Foulkes, started coming to LA around the time that Crossbow was suddenly leading to all this buzz and to David making Animal Kingdom. They’d be going to Sundance, or whatever, and they would stay at our place. We all got on and we became fast friends.

At a certain point we were like, ‘Why don’t we all get a bigger house? We come and go a little bit, and if there’s four of us it’s cheaper’. We started doing that six years ago and two houses later we’re still doing it. It’s a lovely house that’s kind of an oasis in Koreatown. It’s like a mature share house and it works (laughs).

 

 

And from  “Keep ’Em on the Edge of Their Seats: For Lion Screenwriter Luke Davies, “Movies Must be Visceral and Emotional” By Paula Schwartz on 8 February 2017 (Full article in the link)

Luke Davies is a critically acclaimed poet, novelist, screenwriter and essayist born and raised in Sydney, Australia—and now the up-and-coming filmmaker (at the age of 54) can add Academy Award-nominated screenwriter to the long list of his accomplishments.

Question: Did David choose to stay in Australia while you decided live in L.A.?

Luke: We share a house in L.A. There are four of us. It’s a little Aussie gang, so I call it a kind of mature frat house. Somehow there are four of us. There’s David, his girlfriend—Mirrah Foulkes, she’s amazing, she’s an actor but she’s becoming more and more a writer and a director. Right now she’s just been shooting some stuff. She’s got a little role in The Crown.

And then the fourth guy is Alex O’Loughlin. He is the star of that CBS television show Hawaii Five-0, so he pays his rent on his room, which he uses like one month of the year. All of his stuff and furniture is still in the house.

He [Alex] and I shared a house eight of the 10 years that I’ve been in L.A., but he lives in Honolulu with his wife and kids and shoots that show for 10 months of the year. And so it’s this little Aussie gang. We all come and go.

Such an uplifting and great story of this miracle for one of Alex’s closest friends!

 There was a whole gang of us in early recovery. We learned how friendship could be a protective force against the encroachments of relapse.

– Luke Davies, Australian Story, May 2017

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NIDA invites applications for 2003 – Featuring #AlexOLoughlin

As far as we know, this is the earliest article that ever featured anything about Alex’s career.

Alex of course attended NIDA from the beginning or 2000 for the three-year acting course and graduated with his degree in acting at the end of 2002.

After that he started building his career on Television and on the big screen with a number of roles in those two genre, both in Australia and in the USA.

Here is a glimpse of how it all began …..

From the site:

Theatre Reviews by Frank McKone

Theatre criticism and commentary by Frank McKone, Canberra, Australia

NIDA INVITES APPLICATIONS FOR 2003.

posted 14 August 2002

Official picture from NIDA 

What better invitation could you imagine?  Until, maybe, you remember the tv makeover: backstage at NIDA seemed pretty daunting.

And, of course, you can’t forget that your invitation has about a 1% chance of getting you into the party.  Is it really possible to get into NIDA?  Two Canberrans are there now, so I asked them how they did it.

Just to begin with a downer for drama teachers, neither Alex O’Lachlan or Gordon Rymer beavered away at drama through high school and college.  Gordon did all the right things, like study hard across the normal range of subjects, until he started to seriously worry his parents at the beginning of Year 12.  Who said he could act?  What about his nice career, as an accountant or something?  Help!!

Well, Gordon found indeed that he wasn’t a great actor, or likely ever to become one, but he became fascinated with the way theatre production works.  So even more horrors – he became stage manager for the bloodthirsty story of Sweeney Todd with a collapsible barber’s chair on a truck.  In Semester 2, Year 12!  Oh, what will become of him?

(Alex in 2004 in Toronto – promoting Oyster Farmer)

He’s actually a calm and sensible lad who now praises the drama teacher who left him to face up to solving problems like what to do when the wheels literally fell off the truck, on which most of the set was built, as it was being shouldered on for final dress rehearsal.

He took a year off after that, went travelling to Europe, worked as a dishwasher in a large hotel for 10-14 hour days, and thus proved to his parents that he was able to look after himself, and proved to himself that he could work the long hours that NIDA now demands of him.

Only then did he take up the invitation to apply, built a set model with lighting, sound and costume design for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (which he claims was “not very good”) and wrote some 3000 words about why his design was eminently workable.  Phew!

(Alex in Country Music – 2002)

Now in Second Year, Gordon recently was deputy stage manager for NIDA’s Third Year production of Country Music by Nick Enright, in which Alex O’Lachlan was a leading actor.

Wheels falling off trucks was nothing, says Gordon, compared with a 4 hour long play being written in the wings, with pauses for writing lighting plots extending technical rehearsals over a whole week.

Both Gordon and Alex seem to have revelled in the challenge.

(Alex working as a barman – 2002)

But how did Alex get there, via a story which could be entitled, How Not To Get to NIDA?  He was the bad boy of high school and college that many teachers would recognise. 

Actually, they won’t because his name is not in the records, not just because he often wasn’t in school (and never did drama past primary).  Alex needed to escape a Canberra which did nothing for him before he changed his life, and his name.

Perhaps the first solid book he read was AB Facey’s A Fortunate Life, when he was 19.  Here he discovered a common spirit in touch with humanity, a kind of innocence, and a person of honesty who would not deceive another. 

Facey was a model for a new life, and as Alex travelled, also in Europe, he watched films with an ache which he finally recognised.  He wanted to perform with the same commitment and honesty he now saw in so many great actors.

Back in Australia, but in vibrant Sydney, not the cold Canberra of old, he says he literally woke up one morning and knew he must apply for NIDA. 

They didn’t invite him: he invited himself, at the age of 23.

(Alex in Melbourne – 2004)

As soon as his real life began, commitment to the work has led to an avid interest in theatre history covered in essays which would surprise his earlier teachers. 

He told me he is an “instinctual actor – I feel my way through it” but very soon was explaining detailed techniques of characterisation.  He seems to have just the right mix of method and emotion, and control of his life, for us to sincerely hope for professional success.

Alex is the one with the photo, but Gordon will be there in the backstage gloom, making sure all the calls are spot on. 

He didn’t mind not having a photo, he said.  That’s not his role.

For NIDA, ring the Admissions Officer on (02) 9697 7600 or at www.nida.edu.au, but if you may not be in that particular 1%, don’t forget all the other drama and theatre courses available after Year 12.  You can find them all on university websites.

(Alex in Toronto 2004 – Oyster Farmer interview)

1095 Days of #AlexOLoughlin fun – We are Three

Yes, we are celebrating our third anniversary…….

My words to Paula late one night: “I am really proud of what we created here. For me it is colourful and beautiful, as well as informative and truthful.“

Many might not like our style, but we are doing it for ourselves, and as long as we enjoy it and each others friendship, we will be here. But mostly, we still enjoy having fun with Alex and the company of his other fans from around the world very much …. and hopefully it will continue for some time longer.

In the first year we got lots of comments and active participation, but as time goes by people seem to lose interest or just fade away (most probably to avoid my grumpy side  – sorry Paula ). We have gained and lost many “friends” –   and many of them, without even knowing it, being our support in hard times. We might not really know any of you personally, but it is always a joy to see old “friends” as well as new names popping in for a visit.

Now in the later years, it seems that our stories are visited and shared more often than in those early days, but people seem to feel more comfortable discussing it on their own private forums and blogs and groups, than here with us. It is okay with us and we understand, but remember  to pop in once in a while, just to drop us a line as well – even if it is to disagree with us.

A BIG THANK YOU,  to those of you who still regularly comment here and share your ideas.

It is a pleasure to scroll through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest timeline, and see so many of our pictures shared. It is a great complement – especially if someone sometimes do mention where they actually got it from.

Paula puts a lot of time and money into most of the pictures we post – she is a true artist and I am the lucky one for having her as a partner here. Thank you Paula for all the laughs and fun!

THANK YOU to those of you who always share and ‘like’ on our posts on all the different forms of social media.

We ran short in ideas of how to celebrate our joyous occasion, and we thought we’ll give all those spammer comments  that get blocked, another chance to stroke our egos.

Here are some of them…….

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 TO US!!

 Thank You, to all of you for supporting us during the 3 Years of our fun with Alex!!

Lots of love

– Paula & FOYeur

oxox

#AlexOLoughlin: Yes, He’s Got Piercings

A while back we started with a series to supplement our “searches“ posts. We started looking into specific subjects that are regularly searched by Alex O’Loughlin fans. Today we continue with it…..

Searches:

• alex o’loughlin piercings
• alex o’loughlin piercing
• does alex oloughlin have pierced ears
• alex oloughlan with ear plugs
• does alex o’loughin have his ear pierced

This is the one visible thing about Alex, that we all maybe know the least about – his piercings. We have never seen or heard anybody ask Alex about it in interviews. We do not really know if reporters just do not know about them, are not interested in it, if they are too polite to ask, or if it is a taboo subject which they are not allowed to ask him anything about?

And of course without anybody asking about it, there has never been any mention of it from his side either. Nothing that we have seen in any articles or interviews thus far.

Some fans might not even have noticed it before and it is maybe therefore something new for you to discover. But as you know we study Alex and when one does that, you can’t miss the existence of the piercing marks …. However, the big question is, just how many are there? We are not piercing experts, but will try our best to make the study as complete as possible. 😀

Pictures from Feed (2005)

We will do our study in two halves. First we will show those piercing marks that are well-known and those which we are rather sure of. Then in the second half we will look at some of the evidence that we have seen, but which we can not verify for sure. Studying pictures is so difficult, because angles, lighting and shadows, can play a role in what can be observed.

We also have to use a lot of pictures from his work and it could have been altered, just as those from the red carpet events, where Alex might be wearing make-up or publications and photographers could have done some photoshopping. Added to that, we all have folds, and wrinkles and scars and pores on our faces, and that kind of complicates such a study on Alex’s face as well.

(Please remember to click on the pictures for full size and closer inspection)

Let’s start the first part with the most visible piercings….

Left ear

Not only is the large piercing on Alex’s left earlobe the most prominent and visible, but it is also the only place that we have ever seen him wear anything in any of his piercings. As Marcus in “The Invisible” he wears, what looks like, an ear-plug. It will therefore explain why the piercing mark looks like a long line – because it used to be stretched out at some stage.

From ‘The Invisible’

One of the few private pictures of Alex, with something in his ear

 And below, you can see the piercing mark clearly. But are there more?

 

That large piercing scar is quite visible, but have you ever counted all the piercings in his ear left ear? The main piercing is so prominent and in the early days we never realised, that there were multiple piercings …..

Picture from Hawaii Five-0 (2011)

Paula: This frame came up on my screen and I first noticed the booboo on his knuckle, and after a while moved my eyes and *bam!* there´s those other 3 piercings so visible. I really don´t remember noticing them before. 

Pictures from Feed (2005)

This means that there are at least 4 piercings on Alex’s left ear…… (Some days I imagine I see more, but for now we will stick with these)

 Left eyebrow

The other prominent and nearly always visible piercing is the one on Alex left brow. Of course normally a brow piercing needs two holes, one on top of the brow and one below.

Picture from Moonlight (2007)

Left side of the nose

The piercing that can’t be missed on most footage, is the mark on the left side of Alex’s nose.

Picture from 2010

And on this beautiful picture below, all the piercing on the left hand side are visible….. (take a good look, they are there)

Picture taken in 2009

As you can see from the picture below, it is sometimes difficult to see these piercings from the front, but when you know where to look they can almost always be found.

From Hawaii Five-0 (2011)

 (And as usual most of the pictures here, are just to show his pretty face 😛 )

Right ear

The most prominent piercing mark on the right hand side of Alex’s face, is the one on his earlobe.

(Don’t be too distracted by the beautiful long lashes – look at the ear 😛 )

Here we can clearly see the piercing mark on the lobe, but with some other scars or folds as well. The question is, are they old piercing scars or just some odd folds?

Oh, this picture is just here to study closely, because he is gorgeous. 😀

 

Right eyebrow

Not so prominent but also nearly always visible is the piercing on Alex’s right brow. The difficult part, is seeing the bottom hole of this piercing below the brow.

Picture from Oyster Farmer (filmed in 2003)

This means that Alex have at least 3 piercings on the right side of his face, with possibly more piercings on his right earlobe that we can not clearly identify.

Picture from 2009

 This picture below is one of the rare pictures where both sides of Alex’s eyebrow piercings are visible at the same time  – especially the bottom holes as well. Can you see them? Notice that also the nose piercing is very prominent and visible here, but from this angle the left ear piercings nearly disappear. (This picture was taken in 2011)

Now we will move on to the second part of our study

During and after last years’ hiatus, we started documenting this study for a post and came across some other interesting pictures – yes we have been working on this study for a long long time – since the start of the blog actually. 🙂

 

Tongue piercing?

Alex posed for a number of pictures, sticking his tongue out since hiatus 2014. And of course here began a new debate. Do we or don’t we see a scar or even more than one scar of a tongue piercing there?

Searching for proof of a possible tongue piercing

Picture from Whiteout (filmed in 2007)

With a tongue it is always difficult to see anything. First of all the tongue fully extended, is rarely visible and secondly the tongue changes a lot depending on health and other conditions.

This brings us to the conclusion that Alex might actually have piercing mark(s) on his tongue and maybe used to wear something in his tongue, but we can not verify it for sure.

Nipple piercings?

This has been an ongoing debate for us for all the years we have been doing our studies –  are there any piercing marks on Alex’s nipples? According to sources, when the nipple tip does not seem round and even, it can be an indication that there has been piercings.

Although we have seen Alex shirtless on many occasions, we rarely get close-ups or very clear pictures of his nipples. What we do see in these close-ups is that there is a possibility that there is a piercing mark on the top of his nipple. Alex´s nips seem to be more oval-shaped than round. Maybe our guy did like a bit of bling on his nips?  😉

Left nipple:

 Right nipple:

And just because …. 😛

We guess that the answer to this question can only be given by Alex himself, or if we ever see pictures of him with anything in his nipples….. 😀

Second piercing on left brow?

Since the start I have always felt like there seems to be even more piercing marks on Alex’s left brow. And it seems to be true, but once again the bottom part of the second piercing mark is hard to find.

Picture from Feed (2005)

Have a close look at his picture below – do you see both the piercings (top and bottom part)?

Is there a third one?

And this is where Paula says I go ‘piercing-crazy‘, but I sometimes think I see a third piercing on the left brow. Most of the times I agree with her, and say, it can’t be. But I thought to add it here as well.

On top of the brow

Below the brow

Left side of the nose?

While studying Steve last year for the Steve’s story posts, something else came up that made us wonder. Is there a small mark of a piercing on the right side of Alex’s nose as well? We were not so sure that there is really anything there. Maybe it was just a rather large pore?

Take a closer look….

Picture from Feed (2005)

From what we can see there definitely seems to be some sign that this is something more that a large pore. It is however not nearly as prominent as the piercing mark on the left side of the nose. And the indentation into the nose is not as visible, but there is definitely something there.

 Do you see it?

Picture from Hawaii Five-0 (2012)

In conclusion: It seems that Alex have got at least 8 definite piercing marks on his face (remember we count a pair of bottom and top scar of the brow piercings, as one only). And there are at least a definite possibility of 2 or 3 more and most probably even more piercings.

The tongue keeps us wondering ….

And the nipples, they will clearly be a debate forever ……

And then of course, what other piercings might be “hidden” in some parts of his body that we never get to see, that will always stay a possibility, and forever a mystery. 😉

Hope you had some fun with us inspecting this gorgeous face (and body) … and remember this is all just an excuse to stare and study some more pretty pictures of Alex 🙂

Alex Hiatus News for the day – 30 April 2015

After a short visit in Australia over the weekend, it looks like Alex is doing the rounds in LA at the moment. From what we can see, it seems like he had a good time as teacher for a day at the  75% Old School for actors in Sydney.

From their Facebook Page:

Hey, Y’all,

Thanks to everyone for their art and presence over the weekend. From the amazing masterclass with Alex O’loughlin to those who stood in front of and behind the camera for filming showreels.

Some sick feedback too. Sorry I have been slow to reply have had a busy coupla days but will be getting back to everyone ASAP.

Peace, love and that

Y:)x

Thanks to all who shared in this amazing workshop last week.
Art, laughs, talent, work, joy…stoke. Special thanks to Alex O. for sharing his knowledge.

75% Old School. A place where artists can work, without all the bulls**t.

‪(Just a note – Yes, the date on the picture is wrong – It happened on 25-4-2015, and is not something that will still happen.)

On her Instagram, one of the students who attended, posted this:

Yesterday, 29 May, Alex visited the Art of Jiu Jitsu Academy in LA

My guess is that Alex is also there in LA to support his wife with the trunk show of her ‘Swimwear and resort basics collection’, on Friday 1 May 2015 at Ron Robinson.

He will then have to rush back to Hawaii, for the ‘Women’s Self-defence Seminar’ there on Sunday 3 May. To all the ladies going to the seminar – Hope you all have a good time. It is all for a good cause. 🙂

 Thank you to everybody who provided the information. It is always good for us to be able to see that Alex is still doing fine and enjoying himself, while on hiatus from Hawaii Five-0.