CusickGallery.net: Henry Ian Cusick

July 29, 2007, Sunday

HEADLINE: A Lost soul finds his dream island
BYLINE: Jenny Eden

Henry Ian Cusick, a star of the hit American TV series, has
discovered his own little piece of paradise in Hawaii, writes Jenny
Eden

When Henry Ian Cusick looks out of his window each morning, the sky
is so blue he could be living in a digitally enhanced travel
brochure. Opposite his Hawaiian home is a paradise beach with
flawless sand. He rarely goes anywhere without a towel and a pair of
swimming trunks thrown into the back of his car.

It’s a long way from Glasgow – nearly 7,000 miles – and the biggest
career gamble of his life. Two years ago, he had no money, no job, no
auditions and his long-term girlfriend, Annie, had become breadwinner
for the whole family. He was faced with having to give up acting and
find a job that would pay the bills. But he decided to take one more
chance, leave his family behind and go to Los Angeles for 2 months.

“It was a last throw of the dice for me because I was approaching 40
and I thought I couldn’t keep on,” he admits. “I was banging my head
thinking: ‘I can’t even get a bloody audition in this country.’ So
eventually I thought: ‘Either I pack it in now or take one more
chance and go to LA.’ I didn’t have any money and I was crashing on
someone’s couch, but it felt like, despite the bullshit, there was a
sense of real possibility there. And within two weeks I auditioned
for 24, and the same afternoon they phoned back and said they wanted
me for nine episodes.”

In Scotland, when he found work, he had slogged his way through the
obligatory Taggart, Casualty and Midsomer Murders, appeared in Two
Thousand Acres of Sky and The Book Group. It’s the kind of streets-
paved-with-gold story that gets British actors heading hopefully for
Hollywood each year. But while most of them return with only a suntan
to show for their efforts, Cusick is still pinching himself.

After 24, he was offered three episodes in Lost, the cult show about
aircrash survivors on a mysterious island. Cusick had never heard of
it, but as it was set in Hawaii he said yes. So began the rise of one
of Lost’s most compelling characters, Desmond Hume.

Hume – there is speculation he is named after the Scottish
philosopher David Hume – started as the mystery inhabitant of the
island’s underground hatch, where he had spent three years inputting
a number sequence into a computer. We discover that on the one
occasion he failed to do this, the magnetic surge was so great that
Oceanic Flight 815 crashed onto the island.

The Desmond character later joins the survivors and it emerges that
in his previous life he was sailing round the world in a yacht, had
been a soldier with a Scottish regiment, spent time in jail and was
hated by the father of his upper- class English girlfriend.

In a coincidence that could come straight out of a Lost plot line,
Cusick had already met Carlton Cuse, one of the creators of the
series, before he auditioned for the job. He had been staying with
the actor Brian Cox, and Cuse was one of his neighbours.

“Brian said, ‘Oh, there’s my neighbour. He’s got a new car, let’s
check it out.’

It was only when Cuse looked at the address where he was sending the
script that he realised we’d met. It was such a Lost moment.”

As Desmond’s character became more intriguing, Cusick found himself
upped from a few episodes in series two to a regular character by the
third season. This meant moving Annie and their sons, Elias, Lucas
and Esau, to start a new life in Hawaii with him. And for Cusick and
Annie, after 14 years together, it also meant marriage. Visa
restrictions required her to fly back to Britain every three months
unless she was his wife, though Cusick is indignant at the suggestion
that this wasn’t the most romantic reason to tie the knot.

“It was something we had talked about, but things were going along
fine: 14 years into a relationship, marriage didn’t seem that
important. We hadn’t got much money, so instead of a wedding we’d
spend it on going on holiday. We talked about doing it, but more as a
conversation piece.”

In the end, their wedding turned into a joint leaving party for their
friends and neighbours before they moved to Hawaii.

“We did it in Tunbridge Wells register office and had a party back at
our place.

I’m more private, so I would have just liked to have taken Annie away
on our own, just me, her and the kids, and had a very quiet wedding.
I don’t feel I need to have a very public show of affection and
say, ‘Look everyone, see what I’m doing.’

To me, it’s a lot more personal, but Annie had a say.”

He gives a good-natured shrug. His white shirt is unbuttoned to show
a tanned chest and hint of muscle well accustomed to a Hawaiian
beach. He happily admits he is the dreamer in their partnership and
it is Annie, a theatre director, who’s the practical one. They met at
Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre when she was an assistant director and he
was a lowly extra.

Since moving to Hawaii, Annie has taken a break from work and
concentrated on setting up their new home. After the past few years,
he thinks she deserves the time off – and he is obviously happy his
job means he can give it to her.

“Annie has been so supportive – I wouldn’t be where I am now without
her. The good thing is she believes in me, and I think you need
someone who believes in you and can push you along a bit. There’s not
many wives who would say, ‘Go to LA and try and get a job,’ so she
must have thought I could do it.”

The whole family seems to have taken to their new lives effortlessly.
His two youngest sons are already developing American accents. They
have all learnt to surf and, with no television set in the house, the
boys are making the most of their new outdoor world.

It’s the kind of ability to adapt that Cusick himself learnt as a
child. He was born in Peru, where his Scottish father was working as
a minister. The family then moved to Trinidad and Tobago and finally
went home to Scotland when he was 15.

“We arrived in Scotland in 1981 in October and all we had were
shorts, T shirts and flip-flops. We were very dark-skinned, with
bleached-blond hair and very thick Trinny accents. School in Paisley
was very scary. The local kids did not know where Trinidad was – they
thought it was in Africa and we lived in mud huts. The first couple
of years, we had to defend ourselves. We got picked on relentlessly
and it was pretty unpleasant.”

It never occurred to Cusick to become an actor until one Saturday tea
time when he was watching Michael Praed on television as Robin of
Sherwood.

“I thought: ‘Wow, what a great job,'” he laughs. He had never shown
any interest in the theatre, didn’t know any actors, and his friends
and family were incredulous. But he discovered his unemployment card
would get him into the Glasgow Film Theatre for 50p on Friday
afternoons.

He got hooked on French art-house films and fell in love with the
whole idea of becoming an actor: “I’d lose myself and come out
thinking of myself in the film, so I was a total dreamer.”

He tried to turn the dreams into reality by getting accepted at the
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. But lateness and
selectiveness over which classes he would turn up for got him thrown
out. It’s something he admits he doesn’t regret – there are no doubt
plenty of more assiduous students who wish they had his success now.

Fit, floppy-haired Desmond has turned Cusick into a big favourite
with fans of Lost. He’s up there alongside Josh Holloway and Matthew
Fox as the show’s male eye candy, and viewers are constantly coming
up to shake his hand and say, “See you in another life, brother.”

“When you’re in Hawaii, you get on with your life. It’s only when you
come away from it you notice the attention. As for people calling me
a sex symbol, hopefully my wife has always thought I’m a sex symbol.”

Cusick turned 40 this year, and instead of having a midlife crisis,
he sat back, looked at how his life had changed and counted his
blessings. Although nobody’s future is safe on a show that delights
in killing off its best-loved characters, he knows he is back in
Hawaii to start filming series four. For now, that’s as much as they
are telling him and for him it’s good enough.

“I still wake up in the morning smiling,” he says. “Maybe all that
struggle has made me who I am and got me to the place I am today,
working on a series that is a little piece of television history.”

Lost is on Sky One, August 4, at 8pm