Whatever Happened To Luke Wilson?

No group of performers defined the 2000s quite like the "Frat Pack." A play on the name of Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack" and the teen actor "Brat Pack" of the '80s, the Frat Pack was a collective of guys who primarily starred as immature, silly dudes in a lot of dude-bro movies, and often with each other. The core group: Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, and his brother, Luke Wilson.

Both Wilsons got their start in their home state of Texas, collaborating with Wes Anderson in his early films like Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums, and went on to become big stars in their own right. Luke Wilson starred in the Frat Pack classic Old School, along with major roles in beloved movies like My Dog Skip, Idiocracy, and lots more. He often showed up as the stable, good-guy love interest in romantic comedies (particularly Legally Blonde), and on shows like HBO's Enlightened.

We haven't seen Wilson in the prime roles as much lately, but that's just because he's been busy doing other stuff.

When Luke Wilson signed up for his role in 2015's The Ridiculous 6, it probably seemed like a fun idea and a surefire hit. Adam Sandler led the all-star cast on the film, the first in a lucrative and exclusive deal with Netflix, which included Wilson, Terry Crews, Will Forte, and Harvey Keitel. The plot concerned an Old West outlaw who after being raised by a Native American family, finds out he has five half-brothers, who team up to go find their father, who abandoned them all.

A western comedy, easily and affordably viewable on Netflix, and with a cast like that? What could go wrong? This could have been a nice comeback vehicle for Wilson, but that's not what happened. Both during filming and after the film's release, Native Americans protested the film for its hackneyed, "disrespectful" portrayal. "The examples of disrespect included native women's names such as Beaver's Breath and No Bra, an actress portraying an Apache woman squatting and urinating while smoking a peace pipe, and feathers inappropriately positioned on a teepee," reported a Native American website called Indian Country (via The Washington Post).

Nevertheless, shortly after its release in December 2015, Netflix Chief content officer Ted Sarandos announced that The Ridiculous 6 quickly became the service's most-watched movie ... ever.

In February 2018, Luke Wilson was driving in Los Angeles when he was involved in a three-car accident. According to eyewitness accounts, the driver of a Ferrari accelerated and then lost control. The back end of the supercar swung into the path of oncoming traffic, where it smashed into a BMW, clipped and dented the driver's side door of Wilson's SUV, and then smashed into a pole. A witness named Sean Heirigs told his daughter to call 9-1-1 while he could go help the driver of the BMW ... which had been hit so hard it had flipped over, the passenger side of the car laying on the street.

Wilson had already hopped out to assist the driver, a 50-year-old woman, whose leg was caught on something in the vehicle. Heirigs said Wilson feared the huge amounts of smoke indicated there was fire in the BMW, meaning they needed to act quickly. "He was the hero, he led the charge," Heirigs told reporters. Wilson figured out a way to pull the driver through the back of the car, which he did with Heirigs' help. "And this was all going on while the Ferrari's wheels are still spinning and blowing rubber and smoke everywhere," Heirigs said. The BMW driver was hospitalized for minor injuries; the driver of the Ferrari died at the scene. Luke Wilson got back in his car and drove home.

In 2005, Wilson wrote and co-directed (with his brother, Andrew) a feature-film called The Wendell Baker Story. Wilson starred as the titular ex-con who's trying to go straight with a job in a nursing home and win the heart of a woman named Doreen (Eva Mendes). It may have laid the groundwork for Wilson's future in filmmaking.

Nearly a decade later, Wilson returned to writing and directing movies with a short film called Satellite Beach. The piece is the story of a guy named Warren Flowers (Wilson), who navigates the Endeavour space shuttle through the streets of Los Angeles to a museum, and the Atlantis space shuttle to the Kennedy Space Center. The 27-minute piece made the rounds of film festivals, where it did quite well. Wilson and his brother won Best Drama Short Film at the 2014 High Desert International Film Festival, while Luke alone won prizes for Best Screenplay and Best Actor. At the 2014 L.A. Indie Fest, the film took the top prize, "Kick*** Original Short Film."

Luke Wilson has spent some time out of the spotlight privately grieving. In May 2017, Wilson broke the news that his father, Bob Wilson, passed away after a battle with Alzheimer's disease. Long before Luke (or Owen) Wilson started acting, the elder Wilson made huge strides in American television. Beginning in the late 1960s, Wilson was the president of Dallas public TV station KERA-TV, where with local journalist Jim Lehrer he created Newsroom, a precursor to the still-running PBS NewsHour. As the president of an independently-operated public TV station, Wilson had the power to program whatever he liked, and so his KERA became the first American channel to broadcast Monty Python's Flying Circus, the highly influential sketch comedy series. (At KERA's 50^th anniversary party in 2011, Python troupe member Terry Gilliam attended and told Owen Wilson, "Neither of us would be here without Bob Wilson.")

Speaking of which, Wilson's influence was directly felt in one of his sons' movies. Owen Wilson co-wrote and Luke Wilson co-starred in the 1998 movie Rushmore. Bill Murray's character observes his rambunctious, ill-mannered sons and quips, "Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine having sons like this." Owen Wilson placed the line in the script, which he says he took "word for word" from his father's mouth.