Logan Lerman’s Surprising Relationship Playbook: What You Didn’t Expect From This On-Screen Heartthrob

In a world swirling with “performative” gestures and social posturing, finding someone genuinely authentic can feel like hunting for a needle in a haystack. Enter Logan Lerman — not just your run-of-the-mill actor but a genuinely softspoken, attentive, and downright sincere guy who’s been quietly mastering his craft since childhood. From marveling at the simple wonder of fruit growing on trees to navigating the complicated dance of romantic comedy with surprising depth, Lerman brings a refreshing dose of reality to Hollywood’s often glossy façade. Whether he’s tied to a bed in a rom-com sparking debates on TikTok or sharing priceless insights gleaned from legends like Jim Carrey and Pierce Brosnan, Logan’s journey is as compelling as the roles he plays. So, what happens when the “nice guy” moniker gets tangled up in the messy business of love and commitment? Let’s dive into the story of a man who’s learned to run right into life with open arms—even if that means occasionally getting tied up in the process. LEARN MORE.

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IN AN AGE of “Performative Guy” discourse, it’s jarring to sit across from Logan Lerman, a guy who is by all accounts the genuine article. He’s genuinely softspoken, genuinely attentive and interested and interesting, and genuinely…genuine. For the first several minutes of our conversation, he marvels at an apple he’s been noshing on. “You know when you have a great piece of fruit, and you think to yourself, Can you believe that this just grew on a tree? My mind is blown by the very fact that fruit exists,” he says. “I make a fruit plate every night.” When I tell him my immigrant parents, who’ve been thrusting bowls of fruit at me in vain for decades, would love to meet him, his interest zeroes into my family background. It takes a few segues to get back to the topic at hand: him.

It’s the kind of regard that people, or at least the internet, barely expect from anyone these days, let alone a former child star. And lest you forget: Lerman was once, in fact, a child star. He was 7 years old when he first appeared on screen in The Patriot. At 12, he was the co-lead of a network drama, the CW series Jack & Bobby, loosely inspired by the childhoods of JFK and RFK. By 18, he was leading the Percy Jackson film franchise. Then came The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Fury, Bullet Train, scenes opposite Russell Crowe and Pierce Brosnan and Al Pacino and Brad Pitt, a career that more resembled a one-student film school taught by real movie stars. Which might explain why Lerman is such a keen listener.

A good thing, too, since there were a lot of opinions to hear out when Lerman’s latest movie, Oh, Hi!, entered TikTok discourse this summer. The rom-com begins with a nascent couple, Isaac (Lerman) and Iris (The Bear‘s Molly Gordon), leveling up their relationship with a romantic weekend away. After a lot of banter and a little light BDSM, Isaac lets slip that he isn’t looking for anything serious. (Mistake number one. Mistake number two? Saying it while still tied to the bed.) Iris, dumbfounded, thought they were serious. Their parents know about them, they’ve gone away for the weekend, they just engaged in some bondage. If that’s not boyfriend-girlfriend stuff, what is? She decides to keep him tied up until they can see eye-to-eye. “It sparks a lot of interesting conversation, usually drawn from personal experience,” Lerman says. “What makes the movie so good to me is that it splits the room.”

As Oh, Hi! keeps people talking, Lerman is ramping up for the new season of Only Murders in the Building, in which he appears alongside Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez. Men’s Health asked him what it was like adding that cast’s comedy master class to his list of credits, how Oh, Hi! has made him reflect on relationships, and the life advice he’s gotten from Hollywood legends.

Lerman and Molly Gordon in Oh, Hi!.

MEN’S HEALTH: Where did you want your character in Oh, Hi! to land on the spectrum of “nice guy who said an insensitive thing in an unfortunate moment” versus “toxic nice guy”? Because there’s been some debate about that.

LOGAN LERMAN: I didn’t really see him like that. I have a lot of empathy for him, and I thought a lot about why he is the way he is—going deeper into his childhood and who his parents are—and understand why he was being kind of a jerk in that moment. But he was never a one-note dickhead to me.

MH: I’m not even convinced he was being that big of a jerk in that moment.

LL: I mean, it’s definitely debatable, but…

MH: It might say more about me…

LL: …Yeah? No, I understand that. It depends on your perspective. But I do lean toward the side that says he was presenting “boyfriend.” This doesn’t feel like casual dating. You’re on a weekend trip together, you’ve told your mom about her. That’s a relationship to me.

MH: Which is what Molly Gordon’s character argues—and her argument is strong.

LL: It totally makes sense. But I never saw him as a bad guy. He’s a good guy. He just runs from commitment.

MH: Who amongst us hasn’t? I’m running from three or four commitments right now.

LL: I’m kind of the opposite. I run right in. I give myself wholeheartedly to people. So, I found the character interesting. He’s very different from me, and I enjoy playing characters that are different from me.

MH: Have you talked to anyone—your fiancé, friends, family—who’s seen it and come out feeling differently?

LL: I think everybody can relate to these characters, so it sparks a lot of interesting conversation, usually drawn from personal experience. What makes the movie so good to me is that it splits the room. Everyone’s gonna feel differently, but at the end of day it’s a movie with really good conflict, and that’s what we’re all looking for.

MH: Speaking of running toward relationships: You said in an interview that you’ve pretended you watch Sex and the City as an excuse to hang out with a woman. And now you’re engaged to that woman! But have you actually seen an episode of Sex and the City yet?

LL: No. No, not a full episode. I’ve watched parts of episodes here and there. It’s great show from what I’ve seen! But there are so many seasons, so many episodes, and when I start a show, I want it to be with the intention that I’m going watch it all the way through. It’s a major commitment.

It’s funny, that Sex in the City thing. People have been mentioning it to me the past few days. Which means the press picked it up. We got picked up! People care about the weird thing I did! We were talking about the weird or crazy shit we do when we’re in love or infatuated with somebody. And that was one of the weird things I did. I would find excuses to get my now-fiancé to talk to me because, yeah, I was obsessed.

MH: You spend half of Oh, Hi! in bed, tied to the bedposts. Did you have to modulate your performance because you were so restricted? Did you find yourself hamming it up and overcompensating with some big face acting?

LL: I don’t think I ever overcompensated, but it was different from anything I could have planned. I would rehearse the scenes at home, you know, walking around my place, sounding lines, and that’s always going to be different from saying the lines while you’re tied to a bed. Once I was there and felt how confined my range of movements was, I just had to play it. There’s not much else I could do. But it was comfortable.

MH: You’re in Only Murders in the Building this season. What can you tell us?

LL: I don’t know if I can talk about it. I don’t want to reveal too much about my character. I don’t know? I don’t know! But I can tell you about the experience: It was so much fun. The experience of getting to hang out with those people was just so great. I’m the biggest fan of Martin Short. And now to be friends with him? And I got to have fun with him and Steve Martin in between filming scenes? That’s the thing I remember most from the experience. I would be pinching myself on the car ride home. I’d call my friends and say, “I can’t believe I just spent the day with these people!”

MH: Steve Martin and Marin Short have over a century of professional comedy experience between the two of them. That’s got to be a sight to see in action.

LL: It was really cool to see them crafting their comedy—how nuanced it is, the brilliance of finding the funny in a really simple line or action. They can turn something so small into something hilarious, understanding what will make it funny. That’s Steve Martin’s genius: the script will read, “He picks up a water bottle,” and he’ll find a way to make that into a hilarious moment. And you can watch him figuring it out, being spontaneous yet making decisions in a split second. It’s just incredible. But other than that, we think about them as two really funny people, but they’re brilliant actors. Underneath everything that’s funny about their performances, there’s something honest and real. They’re genuine in their characters and that’s what makes you laugh.

Lerman appeared alongside Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in 2007’s 3:10 to Yuma.

Lerman also starred in Fury alongside Brad Pitt.

MH: Since you started acting at such a young age, you’ve grown up learning from some of the biggest actors in the industry. How did they influence your own approach as an actor? What did they teach you that really stuck?

LL: I worked with a lot of actors growing up, who all taught me different things. Jim Carrey had the biggest effect on me in terms of teaching me the fundamentals [while filming The Number 23]—like the foundations for a scene, character exploration, scene exploration, just acting in general. He was really generous with his time. I was only 13 or 14 years old, so he really taught me a lot.

Around that time, [while filming 3:10 to Yuma] Russell Crowe taught me a lot about being respectful to the people you’re working with, especially the people on the crew, understanding everyone’s jobs and what they need to do their job well. He gave me that perspective on how to navigate a set in a respectful way.

MH: You often hear about how veteran actors—well, the good ones anyway—feel a responsibility to model positive behavior when they’re number one on the call sheet.

LL: Yeah, and I was a child too. So it was really cool for him to take me around set and say, “Don’t forget, this person is doing this to keep the day moving. So, help them, and be kind and be gracious.” I remember working with—oh, this is so name drop-y…

MH: It’s not name dropping if I asked!

LL: I know, I know! What was really weird was when I turned 18 and started doing press for movies. And it was for a bigger project [Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief] that had a big international press tour. I worked with Pierce Brosnan on the movie, and he taught me a lot about navigating the process of promoting a movie. His thing was to always be graceful and gracious in these intense situations, like premieres and panels and photoshoots, where you’re meeting a lot of people, from fans to reporters. He taught me a lot about being gracious to everyone in a process that can feel really overwhelming or strange. It was really sweet.

MH: Everybody experiences failure, but actors are in an industry where they experience it in a very public way. How do you learn to manage that, especially when you’re young and more sensitive?

LL: Sure, there were times where I was just not happy with the work or how a movie turned out. But again, I had a lot of good influences who taught me how to deal with those kinds of feelings. Another actor I worked with—and I am not going to name drop again because it feels so douchey…

MH: “But his name rhymes with Shmal Shmacino.”

LL: No, no this wasn’t Al. But it was a great actor, and he said to me, “You’re only as good as your next one.” So, I never really stressed out about the work once it was over. I just wanted to keep working. For every actor, and anybody who works in film, you never know what’s next. And that’s the stress. Everybody’s constantly freaked out. You can talk to the biggest actor ever, and they’ll tell you, “I don’t know what I’m doing next.” And it freaks me out, because it’s a big unknown. So I try to work on things that I really love. But it’s not always the case; sometimes you get talked into stuff. But I try to just brush that stuff off. I’m done when the movie wraps production. I try not to concern myself with the final product—I did my job and it’s out of my hands now.

MH: Your job begins and ends between action and cut. But have your goals and tastes evolved or matured in terms of what you want your career to look like?

LL: I still feel like I’m at the beginning of my career, you know? I’m just now exploring new sides of myself. I’ve only just aged out of a lot of the kinds of roles that can feel so repetitive in your teens and twenties. So everything really feels new to me again, because I’m doing things I’ve never done before.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

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Nojan Aminosharei is the Entertainment Director of Men’s Health and the Special Projects Editor of Harper’s Bazaar. He was previously the Entertainment Director of Hearst Digital Media, and before that a Senior Editor at GQ. Raised in Vancouver, Canada, Nojan graduated from NYU with a master’s degree in magazine journalism. The late Elaine Stritch once told him, “What the fuck kind of name is Nojan? I’m 89 years old, I don’t have time for that shit.”