Why Hughie From The Boys Looks So Familiar
Amazon Prime's The Boys has won audiences over with its irreverent take on commonly accepted superhero tropes, as well as its absolutely stellar casting. Showrunner Erik Kripke's dark, irreverent series has happily tackled the shamelessly violent source material of Garth Ennis' comics, and filled its many demanding roles with people who are able to elevate the series to new heights. Who could imagine anyone but Antony Starr as Homelander, the leader of The Seven, whose powers are only matched by his absolute lack of morals and tenuous grip on sanity? Who better than Aya Cash to portray the show's reimagined take on the comics' infamous superpowered white supremacist, Stormfront? How about The Lord of the Rings, Dredd and MCU veteran Karl Urban as the permanently scowling Billy Butcher, or Suicide Squad's Karen Fukuhara as the unpredictable Kimiko?
Of course, all of the show's violent weirdness is anchored by a fantastic performance by Jack Quaid, whose Hughie Campbell acts as the closest thing the show has to an audience surrogate. Hughie's transition from a mild-mannered everyman to a resourceful, vengeance-driven member of an outlaw superhero assassination squad requires a vast array of comedic and dramatic chops, and Quaid handily delivers on all fronts.
As you might expect, an actor of such caliber didn't exactly come out of nowhere. In fact, you might very well have spotted the talented Quaid before. Here's why Hughie from The Boys looks so familiar.
Jack Quaid was Marvel in The Hunger Games
Jack Quaid made an immediate impact on the acting scene in 2012. His very first IMDb credit is a little film called The Hunger Games, in whihc he played Marvel, a Career Tribute from the wealthy District 1. Marvel is a spear expert who has trained all his life to compete in the Hunger Games, and as a result, he enters the game with utmost confidence and ruthlessness. In the 74th Hunger Games, the character joins forces with the malicious Cato (Alexander Ludwig, who went on to play Bjorn Ironside in Vikings), Glimmer (Leven Rambin of True Detective fame), and Clove (Isabelle Fuhrman) to terrorize the rest of the competitors. Their alliance also includes non-Career tributes, including Peeta Mallark (Josh Hutcherson).
Marvel is a brutal and skillful fighter who makes his abilities clear in the very beginning of the Hunger Games, and who later kills the young Rue (Amandla Stenberg). Unfortunately for him, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) witnesses this and gets the best of him with a well-placed arrow in the chest. Marvel's death continues to haunt Katniss well into The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, in which Quaid's character appears to her in a haunting hallucination.
In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, Quaid — who is the son of Hollywood legends Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid — said that the transition from hanging around major film shoots to actually being in front of the camera was strange but comfortable. "I've been on sets my whole life," the actor said. "But this is the first time in front of the camera and not in a chair with Sour Patch Kids from the craft services truck. It was a new sensation. It was weird ... I really liked it."
Jack Quaid was Fish Bang in Logan Lucky
After Hunger Games, Quaid had little trouble acquiring more work. He honed his acting chops in small roles and short films, and did sketch comedy with his Sasquatch Sketch Comedy troupe. In 2016, he also played Clark Morelle on Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger's HBO period drama Vinyl.
In 2017, it was time to return to the world of major motion pictures. The movie in question was Steven Soderbergh's Logan Lucky, in whihc he joined an all-star cast of Hollywood juggernauts such as Daniel Craig, Adam Driver, Channing Tatum, Katie Holmes, Hilary Swank and Sebastian Stan. Quaid's role in Logan Lucky is the hilariously-named redneck criminal Fish Bang, a part of a brotherly trio led by Craig's safe-cracking expert Joe Bang. Fish and his brother Sam (Brian Gleeson) join Jimmy Logan's (Tatum) elaborate plan to steal a huge amount of money from the Charlotte Motor Speedway during a NASCAR race on Memorial Day weekend.
In an interview with NME, Quaid revealed that he got along with his co-stars rather well — so well, in fact, that he ended up partying with Craig at a rock concert. "Daniel Craig basically said, 'Hey I got tickets to the [Car Seat Headrest] show, do you guys want to come?'" the actor said. "It was maybe one of the best nights of my life."
Somehow, the James Bond actor isn't even the biggest action hero acquaintance Quaid made in his pre-The Boys years. In 2018, he co-starred with Dwayne Johnson in the monster movie Rampage, and was suitably impressed by the hulking superstar. "I had a freeze moment of: 'This isn't real, I'm not looking at the real world right now,'" the actor enthused in describing his first meeting with Johnson.
Jack Quaid joined the Star Trek universe in Star Trek: Lower Decks
With a voice that lends itself well to all sorts of roles, it's no surprise that Jack Quaid is no stranger to voice acting. In 2014, he voiced Dirhael in the Warner Bros. video game Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. The character is the only son of the video game franchise's main character, Talion (Troy Baker). Dirhael's murder by the dreaded Black Hand of Sauron (Nolan North) is one of the tragic events that set Talion on his quest for vengeance.
In 2020, Quaid joined the voice cast of Mike McMahan's CBS All Access animated show Star Trek: Lower Decks as one of the main characters, Ensign Brad Boimler. The character is a Command division junior officer on the USS Cerritos, and a stickler for the rules who frequently clashes with the significantly more gung-ho Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome). In a Star Trek Universe panel at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con (via Trek Movie), Quaid described his character as a "pearl-clutchy" type who's on the hunt for a promotion, yet finds it difficult to get over himself. "He is very book smart but constantly getting in his own way," Quaid said. "He gets very in his head. I always say he would nail the written portion of the driving test with flying colors but once it actually got to him being in the car, it would be a complete and total disaster."
Apart from his ongoing roles on Star Trek: Lower Decks and The Boys, Quaid is also set to appear in a major role in the Scream franchise revival, Scream 5. With his acting pedigree and ever-expanding CV, it's probably safe to assume that we'll hear plenty more from him in the future.