Josh Holloway biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Actor, model. Josh Holloway was born on July 20, 1969, in San Jose, California. While he was still an infant, his family moved to Free Home, Georgia, a small farming town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. His mother worked as a nurse and his father completed two years of medical school before dropping out. His parents' medical training often came in handy because Holloway and his three brothers roughhoused constantly. "They were always patching us up," he recalls about his parents. "We rarely made it to the hospital unless we were broken." Holloway's family often faced tough financial straits; he grew up in a trailer park and began working part-time at the age of 11, collecting chicken carcasses on nearby farms. "I thought about being a forest ranger," he remembers about his childhood ambitions. While he was always an outdoorsman, Holloway was also a film buff as a child, and particularly loved The Shining (1980).

Holloway attended Marie Tesley Middle School and then Cherokee High School in Canton, Georgia. After graduating from high school in 1987, he enrolled at the University of Georgia—his education partially funded, he says, by a brief stint as a shoplifter. He dropped out of college after only one quarter due to financial constraints, and a lack of interest in his studies. Nevertheless, Holloway says he thoroughly enjoyed his small dose of college life. "I went to UGA for a quarter," he says. "One quarter of my extended university life ... I crashed all the frat parties, dressing like a frat boy, acting like I was one of them. I had too much fun. So I had a good time for the quarter that I was a Bulldog. Go Bulldogs!"

Aspiring Model

After dropping out of college, Holloway packed his bags and moved across the country to Los Angeles to try his hand at modeling. Upon arrival, he struggled to get his foot in the door of the modeling industry. "I felt like I made the wrong decision for so long," Holloway recalls. "L.A. will kick your ass. The business is 99 percent rejection." However, with his rugged good looks and bad-boy persona, Holloway gradually carved out a niche for him as an in-demand male model. Throughout the 1990s, Holloway traveled across the United States and Europe working as a runway model for such prestigious designers as Dolce & Gabbana, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan. He also modeled for still photographs, appearing in many magazines. Holloway had mixed feelings about his career in modeling.