Interviews

[jdfan]

InStyle May 2007:

Josh Duhamel & Bonny Kemper

Josh: "Since my mom was a teacher at my high school [in Minot, N.D.] I had no choice but to behave. She was strict. She made sure she was raising us right."

Bonny: "As a teacher, I see kids today who don't want to work hard. They want things given to them. I wanted my children to know that hard work is how you get where you want to be. That and to treat people well, because that's how they'll treat you. Everybody tells me that Josh does, and it makes me want to cry."

Josh: "After my parents split, we had very little money. I was playing hockey and wanted these cool pants that all hockey players wore, but they were expensive. My mom had three jobs at one time, and we couldn't afford it but she got them for me. When I was in the sixth grade, she had these tennis shoes I would borrow that matched her sweat suits."

Bonny: "Josh was a great athlete. When he was a kid, I always dressed him in Green Bay Packers things. I was really gaga the day he got Athlete of the Year in eight grade. There was a huge ceremony. Years later, when he won the Daytime Emmy for All My Children, his younger sister, Ashley, and I were there holding hands. When they announced his name, we jumped up and screamed. I was totally blown away that he was able to learn the lines. He didn't even like giving speeches in class."

Josh: "When I was a kid, my mom was strict but not mean. When you have kids you're a parent first, before you're a friend. As you get older, you become friends. Now we are much closer than we ever were. She still makes my favorite meal: mashed patatoes, meatballs and gravy - very old German. Whenever she's visiting, Jerry O'Connell and my other buddies are, like, 'We're there.' And nobody has more Christmas ornaments or knick-knacks than this woman. It's unbelievable! To the point where I think she needs some help. I took Fergs [his girlfriend, Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas] home for Christmas, and she was in awe."

Bonny: "Josh's style is always quality but never flashy. He's all about comfort. But I do wish he wouldn't wear those raggedy T-shirts."

- as told to Cortney Pellettier!

[silcor]

"But I do wish he wouldn't wear those raggedy t-shirts." --
Spoken like a true mom! I don't have any kids, but I don't like it either when guys or girls for that matter, wear wrinkled, "raggedy" t-shirts. LOL!

[jdfan]

www.instyle.com/instyle/general/gallery/0,,1611505_2,00.html has this extra questions as well as a funny photo of him & his mother!

Josh Duhamel and Bonny Kemper ON JOSH'S GIFT-GIVING

Bonny: "In school he always made his little Mother's Day things—I saved a lot of those. The gift that was the most fun was when he flew me out here and I got a day at the Burke Williams spa. And I got TiVo for Christmas. He's too generous."

Josh: "Well, I try. When is Mother's Day? I've got time."

Bonny: "I like jewelry, but any job I've ever had, I can't wear it. That's why I don't need it."

Josh: "Unlike my girlfriend [Fergie]!"

[jdfan]

Cosmo Girl June/July 2007

JOSH DUHAMEL

Not too long ago in Minot, North Dakota, a guy named Josh Duhamel was on track to become a dentist. But one day he woke up and realized that it was Hollywood or bust! After scoring some modeling and soap gigs, and making his film debut in Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, he found big success on TV's Las Vegas. Now Josh, 34, (a.k.a Fergie's boyfriend!) stars in Transformers as Captain Lennox, the leader of a special operations team who faces larger-than-life trouble. "There's a real fear that goes along with 40-foot-tall robots standing in front of you!" says Josh. Spoken like a true hero! Here, Josh chats about his own heroes - and the path that led him to kick some serious robot butt.

COSMOGIRL!: So what made you want to become a dentist?
Josh Duhamel: I was always good with my hands, and it's a stable profession. I also thought about being a cartoonist. I still like to draw caricatures of people - or I draw myself with gigantic muscles!

CG!: Cute! Did you go to school to study dentistry?
Josh: Well, I was a credit and a half away from getting my college degree when I left school 11 years ago. But I recently got my degree. I just think it's important. The discipline you get helps you throughout your life. So listen up, CosmoGIRL!s: Get that college degree!

CG!: Did your parents support your decision to go into acting?
Josh: My mom was a big Young and the Restless fan. So when I told her I got my first job - on a soap - she was thrilled! SHe still thinks I should be on a soap!

CG!: Now you're on to bigger projects - like Transformers! What was it like to film that?
Josh: I trained with Navy SEALs, who are close to superhuman! I have a lot of respect for them. They're the first into battle; they put themselves at the most risk. They're this country's biggest heroes.

CG!: Do you think you make a good hero in this movie?
Josh: I tried to appear in control. BUt I did a lot of running from those robots, so maybe I wasn't so heroic!

- LORI BERGER

[jdfan]

www.usaweekend.com/05_issues/050206/050206josh_duhamel.html

USA Weekend: February 6, 2005

Meet up-and-comer Josh Duhamel

He's melting hearts on Las Vegas now, and our intrepid reporter spends an afternoon finding out how her fellow Midwesterner went from stockboy to Hollywood hunk.

By Michele Hatty

Josh Duhamel, 32, is currently performing what we have laughingly dubbed "popsicle maintenance." As the hot Santa Monica sun beats down on us, the star of NBC's frothy drama "Las Vegas" (Mondays, 9 p.m. ET) is frantically trying to stop the syrupy juice of a cherry-pineapple popsicle from dripping all over his washboard abs. It's a sight that many a teen girl would drool over. For my part, I can't help but giggle.

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Duhamel on his "Las Vegas" character: "A little playboy is OK, but there's got to be some substance there."
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We found ourselves in this sticky situation because I invited this fellow Midwesterner to take a surfing lesson with me this gorgeous Sunday afternoon, and he gamely agreed. After spending an hour under the tutelage of Surf Academy founder Mary Setterholm, the two of us hit the water. Duhamel (doo-MEL), a natural athlete who was the quarterback of North Dakota's Minot State University football team back in the day, has no problem getting up on the board on his first try. When we finally emerge from the ocean an hour or so later, it's clear a new Moondoggie has been born.

Now, however, we're sprawled out on the beach, talking about how a guy who grew up in a small town in the middle of the country (Minot, population 36,000) ended up making it in Hollywood. "It just sort of happened," he says. "After college, I followed an ex-girlfriend to northern California, did a bunch of odd jobs and then sort of fell into modeling."

Among those odd jobs: running a backhoe, filling orders on the night shift at a hardware distribution center, and working for the Gap. Of the latter job, he says: "I was so poor. They wouldn't let me on the floor as a salesperson, because I was so poorly dressed. And so I was the stockroom boy." He got the last laugh, though: This winter the Gap asked him to be part of their holiday ad campaign alongside the likes of fashion diva Sarah Jessica Parker.

One of his first jobs in "the business" came after he had moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles: a bit part in Christina Aguilera's 1999 "Genie in a Bottle" video. "I was an extra, one of the guys who pull up in a car and crash her slumber party," he recounts. From there, Duhamel continued to audition for bigger roles and commercials until he landed a three-year stint on "All My Children," which films in New York. After that, he headed back to L.A. and has been working steadily ever since. In addition to "Las Vegas," the actor nabbed the title role in the 2004 movie "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!"

"Las Vegas" creator Gary Scott Thompson says Duhamel won the role on that show because, in true Vegas style, he took a risk in the audition. "He chose the most difficult scene [we offered] to audition with. When he walked through the door and said what scene he was going to do, I went, 'Oh, my God. What is this poor kid doing?' " Thompson recalls. "No one else had tried that scene, which was about his character getting caught in bed with the boss' daughter. But he pulled it off. And it was funny. It was everything I was looking for."

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He's been seeing Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas.
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On "Las Vegas," Duhamel plays Danny McCoy, a casino's security expert. With his good looks and charm, he's also the casino's resident hottie, and his character is a bit of a playboy. When the "P" word is mentioned, the actor gets slightly defensive: "A little playboy is OK, but there's got to be some substance there. I don't want him to be somebody who doesn't respect women."

His concern for his character's, well, character makes sense if you look at Duhamel's own life. His parents divorced when he was little, and though he remains close to both, he lived with his mom while growing up. He also has three younger sisters. When the topic turns to his mother, he admits one of his goals in life is to avoid doing anything that would embarrass her. "Unfortunately, I've already embarrassed her a few times," he says sheepishly.

How so? "I was working at Applebee's as a waiter back in college, and I got a call at work, my mother screaming, 'How could you do this?!' I had had a fake ID, and I got arrested for it. Some news channel out of Bismarck, N.D., did a statewide documentary-style [story] about how minors are making fake IDs, and whose card do they use? Whose picture do they use? The whole size of the TV? Mine. My mother had no idea. I'd kept it out of the newspaper. That's how she found out," he says with a laugh.

Luckily, these days his TV appearances are strictly on the up-and-up. "The thing I can say about all this stuff that's going on right now is that I appreciate it. I'll ride this out as long as they'll let me. And if it ends, I'll probably go back to school and be a dentist. But," he turns and looks at me, squinting in the sun and flashing the sort of smile that breaks hearts on sight, "hopefully, I won't have to."