Isabel Lucas

Early life

Lucas was born in Melbourne, Australia, the daughter of Beatrice, a special needs teacher, and Andrew, a pilot. Her father is Australian and her mother is Swiss, she can speak French and Swiss-German in addition to English. As a child, Lucas lived in Cairns, Queensland. She also lived in Switzerland and Kakadu, in the Northern Territory. Lucas attended St. Monica's College in Cairns.

Career

Lucas was involved in drama during her school years and attended courses at Victorian College of Arts and Queensland University of Technology. She was discovered by her now agent Sharron Meissner. She auditioned for the role of Kit Hunter in Home and Away; although the producer of the show, Julie McGauran, felt that role was not right for Isabel, she was sufficiently impressed to have a new character, Tasha Andrews, created for her. Lucas won a Logie Award (for new popular talent) for her performance on the series.

In 2009, she appeared in the vampire science-fiction thriller film Daybreakers with Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe. While working with Steven Spielberg on the World War II miniseries The Pacific, Spielberg suggested Lucas for the role of Alice in the sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, where he served as executive producer for the film with Michael Bay as the director.

In 2009, she was cast in the remake of the 1984 film Red Dawn, alongside Josh Peck, Josh Hutcherson, and Home and Away's former co-star Chris Hemsworth. The film was originally going to be released in late 2010, but due to financial problems it was pushed back to September 2011, then officially released in November 2012.

In 2011, Lucas played the goddess Athena in the fantasy film Immortals and signed on to appear in Terrence Malick's film Knight of Cups.

In November 2012, Lucas was featured as the main character in the music video for "Give Me Love" by British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran.

In March 2013, it was announced that Lucas will star alongside Nick Jonas in the 2014 thriller Careful What You Wish For.

Activism

In October 2007, Lucas was part of a group of 30 people from Surfers for Cetaceans, including American actress Hayden Panettiere, surfers David Rastovich and Vaya Phrachanh who took part in a protest against dolphin culling in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan. The group paddled out on surfboards to the dolphins to attempt to stop the hunt, but they were forced to turn around after being intercepted by one of the fishing boats. They drove straight to Kansai International Airport and left the country to avoid being arrested for trespassing by the Japanese police. There is still an outstanding arrest warrant for Lucas in Japan. In a news interview, Lucas stated that the cull was grounded on purely economic reasons, claiming polls show that 70% of Japanese oppose whaling. Taiji's fishery cooperative union argues that these protesters "continue willfully to distort the facts about this fishery" and that the protesters' agendas are "based neither on international law nor on science but rather on emotion for economic self-interest".

Lucas is a spokesperson for the Australian National Breast Cancer Foundation and supports many organisations, including World Vision, The Humour Foundation, Women Against Violence, Oxfam Community Aid Abroad, Global Green Plan, Save the Whales Again and Sea Shepherd.

In 2010, Lucas and the Summit on the Summit team climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness about the global clean water crisis.

Lucas, a vegetarian, was nominated as one of Australia's Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrities on PETAAsiaPacific.com for 2010.