Exclusive Interview: Chad Michael Murray of 'One Tree Hill' Chad Michael Murray as Lucas Scott
Born on August 24, 1981 in Clarence, New York near Buffalo, Chad Michael Murray was already a performer at a young age. When he was 15, he sustained an injury during a high school football game, and was thus rushed to the hospital, where a nurse encouraged him to pursue a modeling career after his recovery. A couple of years later, Murray won a scholarship from a modeling agency in Buffalo to attend a modeling convention in Orlando, Florida, which he gladly attended. It was there when he was discovered, and later brought to Los Angeles.
About.com conducted an interview with Murray, who talked about his family life, stating, "My dad raised five kids on his own...I came from a broken home and you never can explain it. People have issues. People have good days, bad days. Sometimes people can’t deal with what’s given to them, what’s in front of them, and they abandon what’s important. Maybe they had kids too young. Maybe they never did what they wanted to do with their life. I don't know. All I know is I’m going to try not to go down that path someday when I have kids."
Launching a career in modeling, Murray worked for Skechers, Tommy Hilfiger and Gucci. Soon, he landed a guest role on Diagnosis Murder, and the role of Tristan in Gilmore Girls, with which he stayed for a season.
Moving to North Carolina, Murray played Katie Holmes' love interest in
Dawson's Creek . He consequently appeared in films Aftermath and The Lone Ranger. In 2003, he landed his first lead role in a series, One Tree Hill. In the same year, he appeared in the Lindsay Lohan film, Freaky Friday. In 2004, he starred in the movie A Cinderella Story alongside Hillary Duff and a year later, played Austin Ames in House of Wax.
Horror.com interviewed Murray about his work on House of Wax, and he said, "It was definitely physically enduring. Just with the wax, it’s not as easy to move around in the crap as it looks. We had to shoot this one scene in a peanut butter bed, it looks like a peanut butter bed, when I’m wrestling around with one of the villains, and the first time we shot it, I guess the consistency was not as stable as it should have been, we sunk right down to the bottom, and the bed fell apart, and we were sprawling out, and in order to get out it took two or three guys to actually pull you out of the bed. You could not get out on your own. So it was definitely physical."
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