[KingPriest2]

Actor's past helps on 'Lost'
By Terry Morrow
Scripps Howard News Service

During his lean years, actor Josh Holloway pulled a con on his department-store employers that would make his "Lost" character, the shady Sawyer, proud.

Josh Holloway

He and friends shoplifted merchandise from the store where they worked, then returned it for a refund. They took home thousands of dollars, which helped Holloway through a semester of college. Management never caught on, and in fact loved the hardworking Holloway, he says.
"I was ripping the place off blind, and I left the job as employee of the month," he admits during a phone interview.
Like the self-involved Sawyer, whose cockiness and selfishness irritate the castaways on the hit series (7 p.m., Wednesdays, ABC/Ch. 4), Holloway knows how to survive when money is tight.
It's not a side of he easily admits to or is even proud of, he says, though he understands where it came from. Holloway grew up in rural northern Georgia, about 75 miles outside of Atlanta. His father was a surveyor and his mother was a stay-at-home wife and mother. He and his family lived in a trailer most of his childhood.
"Coming from a poor family, I had the ability to exist, and thrive even, with no money," he says. "I am used to existing without a base, like education, to fall back onto."
Holloway attended college briefly but dropped out for financial reasons. He moved to New York City to expand his horizons and escape Georgia. Then he went to Italy — again without money — and drifted.
"I've done some things that are shady," he says.
After he came back to the United States, he worked as a model and then an actor. Before "Lost," he worked mainly B-movies and hoped for a big break.
Now that success has come, Holloway, 35, says wrapping his head around it has been dizzying.
When he auditioned for the role of Sawyer, he was confident he'd get the part.
"Sawyer is an aspect of me. He's an aspect in you," Holloway says. "He's an aspect in everybody, but I just blow it up for the character. He is not the nicest guy in the world, and now he has to struggle with his redefinition on this island."
"Lost" centers on the survivors of a plane crash on a deserted and mysterious island.
"You find a door for a character, and you exist in it," says Holloway. "I can't just put it on and play a bad guy. . . . You have to exist in someone like this. You let your own life experiences come through that. It's fun because it's an exploration into that side of me."
He hasn't been back to his hometown, where his parents still live, since "Lost" premiered, but he says he is eager to go. "Everybody will start giving me (a hard time)," he says with a laugh.
Now living in Hawaii, where "Lost" is shot, Holloway finds himself laughing out loud when he recollects his down-and-out days.
"I have my moments when I can't believe where life has taken me," he says. "It's amazing. It still has not sunk in that much."