By Jae-Ha Kim
Tribune Content Agency
March 25, 2014
Raised in Chicago and now a resident of Los Angeles, Lucas Neff is best known to television viewers as Jimmy Chance, the young dad on the Fox series “Raising Hope.” (The series finale is scheduled to air on Friday, April 4.)
He’s the first to admit that chance had a lot to do with his career trajectory. Neff gave acting a shot after he was mistakenly admitted into his university’s performing arts department. The actor — who won his “Raising Hope” role a year after he graduated from college — also acted with the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.
Neff’s next big role will be voicing Arlo in the animated Pixar film “The Good Dinosaur,” which is slated for a 2015 release. Fans may follow Neff on Twitter.
Q. What is your favorite vacation destination?
A. Someplace new. I hate returning to the same place. I always feel like I’m missing out. The unknown offers far more. I’m less about vacation, more about experience. I try to avoid places where beheadings are popular though.
Q. To someone who was traveling overseas for the first time, what would you recommend?
A. Get the appropriate vaccines. Learn what drugs are legal. Don’t do anything stupid at customs. If you don’t speak the language, make friends with a local that does, preferably before you go. Hang with the natives. Fall in love. Briefly. If you’re pale, bring sunscreen.
Q. What untapped destination should people know about?
A. The Philippines are gorgeous. Heartbreaking and poverty-stricken in places. But you’ll see true untouched virgin islands and the people are lovely. Nothing like sea urchins fresh from the ocean.
Q. What was the first trip you took as a child?
A. When I was 12, I went to Beijing for an international baseball tournament. Since I was unequivocally the worst player on the team, I spent the grand majority of the trip riding the bench, which filled me with a deep patriotic shame and broke my competitive little heart. But it was still a fairly revelatory experience. We climbed the Great Wall, went to the Forbidden City, checked out the Summer Palace and bought battle axes from desperate, sweating peddlers in Silk Alley for pennies on the dollar. Some of the boys shattered the revolving door at the hotel, and I bought a laser pointer. Ah, memories.
Q. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from your travels?
A. If they say don’t drink the water, don’t drink the water. Though, at Bath (England), they say don’t touch the water, and you absolutely should.
Q. Have you traveled to a place that stood out so much that you felt compelled to incorporate it into your work somehow?
A. I think everything gets incorporated into my work at some point. There’s very little in life that doesn’t merit inclusion in my mind. It’s all relevant. It’s all your life. Having said that, Israel keeps leaping to the tip of my tongue right now, though I’m at a loss to think of a time I used it in my work. It’s uniquely fraught and uncomfortably dense with historical and religious tensions. Perhaps that lends it some theatrical power.
Q. Where are your favorite weekend getaways?
A. San Francisco is a beautiful place to spend a few days. And Canada isn’t that far either. I’ve yet to go south to Mexico for a quick jaunt, but I know for plenty of my friends, that’s their default hideaway.
Q. What are your favorite hotels?
A. You cannot go wrong with the Mandarin in any city. Always gorgeous. Just a perfectly conceived and executed hotel experience. In Chicago, the Peninsula is a really nice, extremely luxurious decision.
Q. What are your five favorite cities?
A. In no particular order and completely subject to change: London. New York. Los Angeles. Paris and Tel Aviv.
Q. Where have you traveled to that most reminded you of home?
A. Well, L.A. is home now. But Chicago is the old home and Toronto really reminds me of Chicago in some ways. It’s like if Brooklyn and Chicago had a baby.
Q. Where would you like to go that you have never been to before?
A. India, the Galapagos Islands and Machu Picchu to start.
Q. When you go away, what are some of your must-have items?
A. Well, I’m pale, so sunscreen. Loads of it. Camera. A pair of swim trunks. Some going-out clothes, some going out in the woods clothes and some walking around clothes.
Q. What would be your fantasy trip?
A. Limitless funds to travel endlessly around the world. Why dream any smaller?
Q. What are your favorite restaurants?
A. In the world? Gah. Boy, I had a great falafel in the old town in Jerusalem that looked like it was fried in a bucket.
Q. What is your guilty pleasure when you’re on the road?
A. Candy bars. Loads of ’em.
Q. What kind of research do you do before you go away on a trip?
A. I Google a lot. See what comes up. Ask friends. See if there’s anyone I know in the area. Read some popular books on the region, or, at the very least, skim.
Q. What is your worst vacation memory?
A. The family car broke down in Kentucky, and I was stranded for three days in a motel with loads of late Spanish homework.
Q. Where is the most romantic destination?
A. Good lord. I don’t know. Some place without cell phones.
Q. If you’ve ever gone away for the holidays, did you find it refreshing to be away from home–or a bit lonely?
A. Both. They’re not mutually exclusive. Sometimes it’s refreshing to be lonely.
© 2014 JAE-HA KIM
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC
