Josh Hutcherson is opening up about the rejection he experienced after starring in The Hunger Games.
The actor, who portrayed Peeta Mellark in the four The Hunger Games films, recently spoke about how his success at a young age impacted him later in life while guesting on the Dinner’s On Me podcast.
“I just only knew success,” Hutcherson said. “From the age [of] 9 to like 24 and then kind of post-Hunger Games world.”
Hutcherson said The Hunger Games “set things up” for him.
“The industry’s so g****** tricky. They set you up in this way where they’re like, ‘You’ve arrived.’ You now are working with Jennifer Lawrence and Philip Seymour Hoffman. And you’re in this movie, it makes billions of dollars. You’re the second lead of the film. Like, what do you want? The kingdom is yours. And it’s not at all.”
The actor said that while his rise to fame may have been fast, the fall was just as quick.
“As quickly as they’re excited to get you into that spotlight, they want to not give you anything else. In a way it’s very complicated,” Hutcherson said. “So I tasted my kind of first feeling of disappointment, failure, rejection … probably when I was like 24 or so.”
He may star in the Five Nights at Freddy’s films and the new HBO series I Love LA, but Hutcherson said his work slate was not busy for a long time.
“It was just like a string of no one calling, not getting any offers, auditioning but not getting cast,” Hutcherson said. “Of course, there are things that you don’t get cast in, but I had only known that the chances are, if I was auditioning, [I] was going to book it. That is just not the reality at all.”
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