Logan Lerman Can’t Play It Cool

My attachment style? What does that mean exactly? I want to try to understand this,” Logan Lerman asks me, his aquamarine eyes scrunched in genuine confusion. In both the new indie dramedy Oh, Hi! and Haim’s “Down to Be Wrong” music video, he plays characters who are pretty much the human embodiment of avoidant attachment — why else would Danielle Haim excoriate you on a hotel bed while her sisters glower in the corner?

However, when I run the happily engaged 33-year-old through the options — in addition to avoidant, there’s secure, anxious, disorganized — he ends up creating a new category entirely. “What am I? I’m ‘constantly available.’ I never played games. If I liked someone and they wanted to hang out with me, I’m just like, ‘I’m there. I’m going to drop everything.’”

Lerman knows his all-in approach is unlikely to take off as the dating advice du jour. Yet his close friend Joey King, who played his sister in both Bullet Train and We Were the Lucky Ones, says these traits do make for a great BFF. “Logan is a person who literally, no questions asked, shows up for you. He does it quietly, expecting no praise or acknowledgment,” she writes over email. “I’m thrilled to have a jar of homemade almond milk from Logan in my fridge at all times, and to know that when I don’t feel like driving, he’ll come pick me up. It’s incredibly special to have friends that make you feel loved.”

For his Oh, Hi! co-star Molly Gordon, who co-wrote the film with director Sophie Brooks, it was these obvious good-guy traits that made her think of him for the dickish role of Isaac. “We really didn’t want to cast someone who was [actually] an asshole,” says Gordon, who plays love interest Iris. In theaters July 25, Oh, Hi! follows Isaac and Iris as they embark on their first romantic getaway to a farmhouse in upstate New York. There, they make out in a creek, sway under string lights in their backyard, and ultimately, experiment with bondage — but after Isaac admits he’s not looking for anything serious, the vibes quickly go from Pinterest-perfect to “Close Friends only” crash-out.

“Interestingly enough, he’s more of an Iris. I feel like I’d be more Isaac because I’ve been avoidant at times in relationships,” says Gordon, who thinks that playing against their own types only helped enrich the characters. “He’s a very rare bird in this industry. This is a big actor that came and joined us to basically shoot in a barn in the middle of nowhere and be tied up [for most of it]. He’s a very heart-on-your-sleeve person… and such a professional, so I learned a lot from him. But I was like, ‘You don’t have to be so nice to everyone.’ That’s what I taught him.”

Lerman’s approach to work is not that different from his approach to love. “I’m just down. If the feeling’s there, I’m down to jump into the deep end,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Let’s go.’”

Below, the actor reflects on having compassion for his exes, the surprising ways he wooed his fiancée, and being an OG Tumblr boyfriend.

“I haven’t forced someone to be with me, but I’ve done things that are totally weird ways to get someone to continue seeing me.”

Isaac is a refreshing update on the f*ckboy archetype. He’s not a dick, exactly. Rather, he’s killing Iris with kindness: cooking her scallops, going down on her in broad daylight… but refusing to be in a relationship with her. What excited you about playing this wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing type?

I mean, I never saw him as a villain. I also never saw him as someone who knew what he really wanted [from their relationship]. He didn’t think it through that much until a more formal conversation came up. I think it scared him. I know “Isaacs” that I’ve dated in the past, and I remember being left with that question: “Why did it end? It was good. Why would this end when it starts getting serious?”

I always go to the relationship with the parents with people and characters. That’s where it starts. But I never saw him as being a bad guy, and I never saw the people that I dated that didn’t work out as being bad. I just thought there's some block there that they can’t get through. What is that and why?

Was that a cathartic experience for you?

For sure. I had a lot of empathy for those people that I dated in the past and have hope for them to get to a place where they can be happy in a relationship. I had the same thing with Isaac. I was like, “I really hope that he can get to a place where he can be happy with someone.”

Molly categorized you as an Iris. I’m assuming you agree?

Very much so. Dating in your 20s is weird and hard, and learning how to date in a healthy way is such an interesting process in life. I’m a bit of a romantic. I jumped into things quickly and had to learn how to slow things down as I got a bit older.

What’s the most Iris-y thing you’ve ever done for a partner?

I haven’t forced someone to be with me, but I’ve done things that are totally weird ways to get someone to continue seeing me. When my fiancée [artist Ana Luisa Corrigan] and I were early on dating, I used to lure her to hang out with me by getting these really special papayas. I’d order them and take photos and send them to her and be like, “Look at these papayas! You want to hang out tonight? I mean, I have really good fruit.”

That’s… incredible.

I’d be like, “God, how can I message her?” This is psycho, but I’d record the opening to Sex and the City as if I was watching it, even though I wasn’t. I’d be like, “Hey, I’m watching Sex and the City…” and try to hang out that way. There’s some really crazy sh*t that I’ve done, but we all do crazy sh*t when we’re in love.

“Dating in your 20s is weird and hard, and learning how to date in a healthy way is such an interesting process in life.”

We also all do crazy sh*t when we’re feeling rejected, which comes up in Oh, Hi! as well as Haim’s “Down to Be Wrong” video. How has it felt playing a vessel for female rage across two projects now?

It aligned with the movie in a weird, unexpected way because I don’t think they knew anything about what the movie was about. Alana [Haim] called me a day before and was just like, “Can you do this, please?” And I was like, “Yeah, sure.” It was a crazy shoot day, we were there until 2 a.m., but it was so cool watching them do their thing. I was just like, “I’m easy. I’m your friend. I’m here. I’ll do whatever.”

The parallels really are wild. I mean, in both projects you’re laying in bed getting yelled at by a woman.

[My character] was just a jerk. I loved it. They put me in a puka shell necklace and I was like, “This is amazing.”

Did you have any trepidation about the bed setup in Oh, Hi? Molly’s character handcuffs you to it for the majority of the film.

No, it was fun. Sure, my arms got a little stiff but that’s nothing to complain about. My only question was what the bed frame was going to look like so that I could know how much movement I’d have. I remember Sophie and I spent a good amount of time just looking at different designs and discussing how that affects the camera and all the positions that we could get. Once we settled on the bed frame, it was kind of liberating because I had less options. As an actor, you walk into a scene and there’s so many ways to go about blocking or delivering your lines. This was just pretty limited.

The film also really upends a perception of you that’s persisted ever since Perks of Being a Wallflower made you a Tumblr king…

I don’t know what that is. I don’t even know what a Tumblr king really is.

I just mean that you’re viewed as an “internet boyfriend,” now across platforms, but Tumblr was a big one for you early on.

I’ve seen maybe a little bit of it on other platforms. It’s been all right. Everything is just a means to make more movies.

You were on The Tonight Show recently where you mentioned that you have a group chat with five white male actors with brown hair around your age who all get mistaken for each other. Your fellow internet boyfriends, if you will.

Oh, that might’ve been a joke. But there are five people where we’re all interchangeable in people’s eyes. Dylan [O’Brien], who’s one of my good, good friends, and I get it all the time. I get, “You’re the Maze Runner, right?” I’m like, “No, but thank you! I do love that guy. He’s a handsome dude.” We get Dylan Minnette all the time, too.

Do you guys find yourself often auditioning for the same roles?

Yeah, totally. We don’t really talk about that stuff too much when we’re hanging out, but we’re really supportive of each other.

“I jumped into things quickly and had to learn how to slow things down as I got a bit older.”

You’ve also allowed your acting career to take more of a back seat to your producing ambitions over the past few years. It takes a lot of confidence to do that.

I don’t know if I have confidence. I’ve done things where I’m like, “I didn’t want to do this. I got talked into it.” Or I’ve just done [projects] for money, which is great because then you can be like, “I don’t necessarily need to work right now to pay the bills. I really want to wait for the thing I’m crazy about.” It’s not like anybody made money making Oh, Hi! This is just something we're all passionate about.

What was it, exactly, that made you so passionate about the film? What was it saying about dating in 2025 that really excited you?

Oh, just that dating sucks. It always sucks. I learned to enjoy it a little bit more and not hate being single or whatever. At a certain point in time I was like, “This is great. I can be so selfish and put all my time into work!” But dating has always been difficult.

Top image credits: Loewe sweater