These days, Josh Duhamel lives a quiet life away from Hollywood lights with his family living in both Minnesota and North Dakota. It’s not quite art imitating life in his new film, “London Calling.” His character Tommy is fleeing London and heading straight to Los Angeles to complete a hitman job after a job gone wrong.
The actor has been busy on set for his new film, starring opposite Jeremy Ray Allen, who plays Julian. Tommy is faced with an obstacle as he is forced to babysit his crime boss’s son, Julian, and teach him how to become a man.
“Go see ‘London Calling’, it’s an amazing movie,” Duhamel says while discussing how he relates to his character juggles career and family life. “Unfortunately, not much shoots in Los Angeles anymore, so you’re sort of forced to go on the road.”
The North Dakota native also recalls how, when he first broke into showbiz, he didn’t want to leave his hometown in Minot, ND, for the city life.
“I grew up in North Dakota all the way up until I was 22 years old and couldn’t wait to get out of there because I’d gone to high school, college,” he told entertainment reporter Courtney Tezeno. “I just couldn’t wait to go out into the world and explore.”
Duhamel says while he’s grateful to have “seen places in the world that” he could only imagine, he had a revelation that his small town keeps him “grounded.”
“I didn’t think I would ever want to go back. I was like, maybe when I’m in my late 70s, I’ll go back,” he said. “But something happened the last couple of years where I really started to appreciate what that state and what the people there meant to me. They’ve kept me grounded throughout. I’ve got a great group of friends. I’ve got a great family.”
“They don’t treat me any differently than they do anybody else. And I think that’s really kept me sort of down the straight and narrow in a lot of ways,” Duhamel continued. “And I bumped off the rails quite a bit in my career, almost went in the ditchbecause of that love and that sort of that, that route to home that I have there, I decided to go back. And I’m now a resident back in North Dakota after all these years.”
He also has a 26-acre lakeside cabin in Minnesota that he claims is “doomsday” ready. When asked what inspired him to move away from Hollywood, the actor says he “[finds] a lot of happiness” in getting back to the basics.
“I’m not really off the grid,” he explained. “It was almost like homesteading when we first got out there, because there was no electricity or water for the first five or six, seven years. But you just make sure you bring enough in. You make sure you got enough wood for the fire, and there’s the basics. Things we take for granted.”
Duhamel assures us his wife, Audra Mari, and sons, Axl, 12, and 19-month-old Shepherd, don’t live at the Minnesota property year-round. They enjoy quality family time at their tucked-away home that’s “deep in the woods” and about “40 miles from any kind of grocery store.”
“We try to spend as much time as we can out there,” he said. “It’s been a really fun sort of escape to be able to get out of the rat race and get back to the basics. You know, make memories with the kids and the family.”
The 52-year-old actor continued, “As I’ve gotten older, I think I just wanted that privacy and that back-to-basics lifestyle.”
Catch Duhamel in action when “London Calling” hits theaters on September 19.