JOSH HEUSTON AND I are sitting on some low-slung white chairs at the back of a photographic studio in Sydney’s Brookvale, when the actor makes his first reference to logging his “10,000 hours”.
It’s a pet phrase for Heuston, a riff on author Malcolm Gladwell’s pseudo-scientific figure from the book, Outliers, regarding the hours logged on a particular skill that distinguishes geniuses from mere mortals. Heuston comes back to it throughout our chat and uses it as both a guiding light and as a mental bedrock. It helps him to stay humble and hungry as he pursues a career he never dreamt of, kind of fell into by accident and initially “sucked at”. Heuston knows how much he doesn’t know about the intricacies of his craft. And he knows how far he has to go. That, of course, is his strength.
“Yeah, I sucked,” the 28-year-old Sri Lankan-Australian laughs, as he recalls his first foray into acting at nighttime classes. “I’m still trying to, I guess, master this craft, which I don’t think you ever do really do. It’s an ongoing quest for perfection that you’ll never reach.”
I ask Heuston what specific hour he thinks he’s up to?
He rocks his head back, as he runs his hands through his thick dark locks, seemingly a little flummoxed by the question. “Oh god, some days, if everything’s going perfectly, I’d say I’m on hour 100,000,” he laughs. “But then other days I’ll be like, I’m on hour zero.”
A good answer, perhaps even a wise one, relatable to us all – life is full of ups and downs, after all – but perhaps even more so when you’re engaged in a relentless struggle to somehow find truth in a profession that straddles art and artifice.
Heuston counts every little bit of rehearsal and lines spoken into his bathroom mirror as minutes logged toward his lofty goal. “Definitely!” he laughs, before citing a line he heard about rehearsal and auditioning being the ‘work’, when it comes to acting, and performance, the play. It all counts towards those hours, he says. Toward ‘sucking’ that little bit less, a philosophy that’s true whether your job’s playing teenage heartthrobs and princely planetary rulers or driving pylons into hard dirt on a building site.
“Whether it be training for something or acting or whatever skill set, I have that mentality of just continuing to do it,” says Heuston, who’s joining Men’s Health today to help model BOSS’ new bodywear range, BOSS ONE. “You get a little bit better every day and then it compounds, and then in a year from now you’re like, Wow, I’m actually pretty good at this thing. You can do anything. You’ve just got to put in the hours.”
You get the feeling Heuston will be telling people the same thing when he’s 80. When he’s logged more hours than he cares to remember. When he barely sucks at all. And he’ll be right.
HEUSTON IS JUMPING high into the air on a mini trampoline, his image cast against a blue sky backdrop, before pretending to tumble to earth (the motion could serve as a metaphor for the vicissitudes of his profession), as our photographer clicks away. Each time he lands there’s a collective sigh of relief among our crew that the actor hasn’t flipped the trampoline and face-planted on the concrete floor.
Instead, Heuston’s movements are acrobatic and poised. With his lean, muscular frame, he could be a dancer; he certainly moves easily in front of the camera. He did some gymnastics as a kid, he says, and mucked around making parkour videos in construction sites around Sydney’s Baulkham Hills as a teenager. Those skills might be helping him out today – the ‘hours’ he spent trying to land back flips off brick walls clearly weren’t wasted.
“I’ve looked back at some of those videos recently, and it’s actually not as bad as I thought it was from memory,” says Heuston. “But I feel like I’ve lost a lot of that unfortunately.”
He was a sporty kid, trying his hand at everything, but excelling most notably in rugby union, where he played halfback for his school, Gilroy Catholic College. “Passing and speed were my main things,” he says. “I wasn’t big enough to play front row or anything.”
At this point I wonder if a scar on Heuston’s forehead is a remnant of his energetic childhood, perhaps an errant boot stud or a rusted nail graze from a long arvo in a desolate junkyard. He quickly disabuses me of the idea. “I fell over in the bath when I was a baby. Those rubber ducks will get you.”
Heuston’s childhood sounds like something from simpler times, when bored kids roamed their neighbourhoods, inevitably getting into mischief. “It was a very Stranger Things sort of thing, where all the kids came in from different areas on their bikes and we’d either go to the skate park or go to the river,” he says. “Most of the time we’d just get up to no good, but in like a fun way. It’d just be a bunch of kids running amok.”
Despite the amount of travelling he does these days, Heuston is still tight with many of this crew, with talk of a Thailand trip later this year. You wonder what they made of the modelling gigs Heuston started to land as a teenager.
“I remember when I first got scouted, I was still in school, so I went to them and I was like, ‘Should I do this thing?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, why not give it a go and see what happens’.”
What happened was that Heuston was a natural in front of the camera – as a model he might have started at hour 9,990. After being spotted while waitering at a fashion event, he was soon working with high-end brands. While he hadn’t been a conscientious student, he did well in maths and science and had idle dreams about becoming a vet. He would go on to complete a double degree in biomolecular science and commerce at Macquarie University, but once his modelling career took off, Heuston’s ambitions of caring for animals were shelved.
He still enjoys modelling and working with brands – as his work today with BOSS clearly shows. But after a role in a music video in 2017 alongside model, YouTuber (and former girlfriend) Cartia Mallan – he knew he’d found a calling.
“That had the tiniest little bit of acting in it, and it was essentially like, ‘Take this camera and follow this girl into the field, and you’re going to feel like this, and then you’re taking photos of her’. And I was like, ‘Oh, man, this is amazing. What is this?’ And the director of the shoot was like, ‘It’s called acting’.”
He enrolled in classes immediately afterwards, his internal clock beginning its slow tick toward 10,000.
I’D FIRST MET HEUSTON at an event in Adelaide two years ago. Heartbreak High had recently come out and Heuston was in the early days of becoming ‘Josh Heuston’, the teen heartthrob and hot young actor destined for great things.
The Netflix reboot of the iconic ’90s drama about Sydney high school kids struck a chord with teenagers all over the world and Heuston, as the kind-hearted if roguish Dusty Reid, instantly became pin-up material – an image his two younger sisters have been quick to puncture.
“Yeah, they explode it,” he laughs. “They eviscerate it. I guess they’re two of my grounding points, whenever I get back home. I just get told I’m a loser and a little shit. It’s like the facade of what other people put on you and this industry, it just disappears.”
Before Heartbreak could make Heuston a fully-fledged heart throb, though, he first had to learn the facets of acting that can be taught – learning your lines, hitting your marks, allowing your fellow actors space, being in the moment. The rest? That’s the hard part. “I wasn’t instantly gifted at it [acting], that’s for sure,” says Heuston. “But I just loved the challenge of it and continued. I really loved the research, trying to create a new character or learning something about someone else.”
With a family full of psychologists – his mum and grandma both worked in the field, while his younger sister is on her way to joining them – Heuston liked the opportunity acting gave him to dig into human emotions and motivations. “I kind of grew up with conversations of humanity and what makes people tick,” he says. “And I guess it’s come through me in a different way to them.”
Acting also challenged him to reckon with some of his own hang-ups, he says, the most obvious being shyness. “I think when you’re a younger man, you’re trying to figure out your place in the world and who you are, and some people are innately confident,” he says. “I don’t think I was nearly as confident, but I built confidence through pursuing what I’m passionate about. Initially, there was a lot of shyness being like, Oh, I don’t want to do that. What are people going to think? But as I’ve gotten a little bit older, that second guessing has kind of dissipated.”
It’s not an easy process and while Heuston, today at least, appears to be a picture of self-assurance, the challenge is real. “Acting in itself is the art of failure,” he says. “You audition a hundred times and generally you won’t get anything. But each time you’re continuously developing your confidence through rejection, and then you get better and you build your confidence.”
Heuston’s attitude to auditioning is straight out of a sports psychologist’s manual . . . or a Nike commercial, and while it sounds cheesy, sometimes you have to lean into motivational mantras just to keep showing up. “You miss a hundred per cent of the shots you don’t take,” he says, a knowing smile indicating he’s aware of how this might sound to those of us who aren’t in the habit of putting ourselves out there. “I’d rather take the shot and miss than not have a go and wonder what if. I think one of my coaches said, ‘It [acting] is a combination of luck, talent, and hard work, and you only need two of them at a time’.
Of course, Heuston has battled back and forth with his self-belief over the years, but what’s helped him hold his ground in this inner struggle, is his competitiveness. He grins when I bring it up. “I’ve always been the worst person to play any board game with,” he laughs. “Monopoly? We won’t be friends after it. I’ve always had quite a lot of discipline, whether it be for fitness or focusing on the craft or sticking to a schedule.”
Prior to Heartbreak High, Heuston had landed a small role in teen drama series Dive Club. He then had a cameo in Thor: Love and Thunder, working alongside Chris Hemsworth, Russell Crowe and Taika Waititi. That must have been intimidating, I venture. After all, he only had one acting credit to his name at the time.
Heuston nods, leaning forward in his chair before sweeping his mop of hair back once again. “Walking onto a set like that, there’s a lot of nerves, but credit to all three, everyone just becomes an equal,” he says. “They didn’t make it seem like, ‘Well, we’re these big actors and you’re not’. They were all super accommodating and nurturing, and you just watch a master class basically. I just took in everything.”
The lessons continued after Heuston landed a role in Dune: Prophecy, a big budget HBO production with seasoned actors like Travis Fimmel and Emily Watson. “That was another learning curve and a half,” he says. “It was very practical sets and huge, huge, production value in comparison to other things I’d been on. So, it was another master class. I hadn’t had a main role in something of that scale before. Again, it was just hours in the game.”
HEUSTON BEGAN HIS day with a 3k run around his neighbourhood in Baulkham Hills. He stays with his family when he’s in Sydney, which given his filming and fashion commitments, isn’t that often. He was recently in Miami with BOSS, a brand he’s worked with quite a bit over the years. He likes the German fashion house’s elevated combination of versatility and utility, he says.
“I feel like BOSS is just a very rounded brand,” he says. “You have everything from really, really high-quality tailoring to everyday street style. So, I think, especially with the travel that I’ve done with them, you get to see all the different samples. It’s a very elegant brand, but also practical.”
Heuston’s fashion tastes are function-based, he adds. “I kind of just wear whatever I feel confident in. I like to put on a suit and dress up here and there. But then I also like to just wear ripped jeans and a T-shirt.”
If you’ve followed Heuston on insta at all, you’d know he doesn’t always wear a lot of clothes – perfect for Men’s Health, you might say – which is perhaps not surprising when you’ve got a rig that rises and ripples in all the right places.
The gym is Heuston’s happy place; hoisting iron helps ground him in the present moment. He’s been going to the same chain gym in the Hills district for nearly 15 years and even on the road he’ll find somewhere to work out every day, for up to 45 minutes.
“I feel like if I don’t train, I get jittery,” he says. “My meditation is training. That’s the cornerstone of my mental health.” Many days, he’ll run between 4-8km in the afternoon, just to “burn it out . . . wash off the day”.
Not surprisingly, then, Heuston enjoys the physical prep and opportunity to skill-up that goes into fleshing out a character. “You feel more like the person,” he says.
To play Dune’s Constantine Corrino, a playboy prince, required Heuston to get lean and defined. In upcoming film, Dangerous Animals, a horror movie about real estate, he needed to bulk up. “I had a little bit more size on because he was a real estate agent who was a surfer but would also train at the gym.”
The rigid topography of Heuston’s torso might say otherwise, but he swears he’s an 80/20 guy when it comes to his diet. “It’s pretty clean most of the time. It’s generally just like steak and vegetables or quite a lot of fruit. But then I’ll still smash a burger here and there.”
Numerous functions, red carpets and fashion events don’t help his cause. “What are you supposed to do? I don’t mind a beer here and there. You’ve got to balance it.”
Fitness, fashion and travel go some way to helping Heuston fill the gaps between roles, though he admits the void can be mentally challenging at times. “When you’re not booked on a role you think your career is over,” he laughs. “But I just go back to class and keep logging hours.”
While the inconstancy of Heuston’s profession poses its challenges, it’s also what draws him to it, he says. “I feel like that’s what keeps it exciting because you don’t know what’s about to happen. It’s not like a normal nine to five. You trade security for the uncertainty, but that also means that you’re not doing the same thing every day, which I’m probably not built to do. As long as you just keep your focus and you know what you’re working towards. I’ve always kind of just winged everything and it’s worked out so far. As long as I’m also putting in the work, I think it’ll be fine.”
The confidence is refreshing to hear, particularly in a profession where you fall as often as you fly. But the truth is, hard work – yes, logging those hours – is what allows you to ‘wing it’. And if you’re lucky, to land on your feet.
Josh Heuston’s chest and arms workout
Heuston works out each day for up to 45 minutes. Here’s his chest/arms day
Superset 1
- Incline dumbbell chest press – 4 x 12
- Chest flys – 4 x 12
Superset 2
- Incline smith machine press – 4 x 12
- Push-ups – to failure
Superset 3
- Triceps pull-down – 4 x 12
- Overhead cable triceps extension – 4 x 12
- Hammer curls – 4 x 12
Abs
- Hanging leg raises – x 12
- Preacher curls – x 30
Words Ben Jhoty
Photography Chris Gurney
Creative Director Grant Pearce
Digital Director Arielle Katos
Producer Sofia Sallons
Grooming Krystyan Low
Fashion Assistant Laura Annis-Brown
Art Direction Evan Lawrence
Video Jasper Karolewski
