Garrett John Hedlund (born September 3, 1984) is an American actor from Minnesota.
He first starred as Patroclus in Troy with Brad Pitt, then with Billy Bob Thornton in Friday Night Lights, Mark Wahlberg in Four Brothers and moved on to films like Eragon, Georgia Rule, TRON: Legacy, Country Strong and Triple Frontier.
His acting skills have enabled him to play a broad variety of characters; the little brother, the bad guy, the mysterious newcomer and plain college boys.
Along with his good looks and height, Garrett is known for playing tragic, sympathetic characters. In almost every film he stars in, he either:
- A - Dies.
- B - Plays a normal character that, during the progress of the film, might get worse treatment than others before receiving a happy ending.
- C - Plays an abused character that might or might not get a happy ending, but at least gets a great moment at the end to show everyone else that he wasn't all that bad.
He dated Kirsten Dunst from 2012 to 2016. In 2019, he began dating Emma Roberts - with whom he had a son - but the two separated in 2022.
Filmography
- Troy (2004) as Patroclus
- Friday Night Lights (2004) as Don Billingsley
- Four Brothers (2005) as Jack Mercer
- Eragon (2006) as Murtagh
- Death Sentence (2007) as Billy Darley
- Country Strong (2010) as Beau Hutton
- TRON: Legacy (2010) as Sam Flynn
- On the Road (2012) as Dean Moriarty
- Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) as Johnny Five
- Unbroken (2014) as John Fitzgerald
- Mojave (2015) as Thomas
- Pan (2015) as James Hook
- Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016) as Dime
- Mudbound (2017) as Jamie McAllan
- Triple Frontier (2019) as Ben Miller
- Burden (2020) as Mike Burden
- The Tutor (2023): Ethan
- The Marsh King's Daughter (2023) as Stephen Pelletier
Associated Tropes:
- Big Brother Instinct: In Death Sentence, and is the recipient of this trope in Four Brothers.
- Blessed with Suck: As stated above, his characters are mostly guilty of this.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In Death Sentence. All he does, is for the sake of his brother.
- Smoking Is Cool: In almost all of his films, most prominently in Four Brothers and Death Sentence. Slightly subverted, as he is rarely seen smoking off-screen.
