Josh Hutcherson is liking what he sees in the mirror

After two decades in the spotlight and a mega-franchise to his name, the actor thought he was used to exposure. Now, after a Gen Z–ified promo tour for I Love LA, Hutcherson is seeing everything – insecurities, confidence, fame – in a new light. And it feels good

osh Hutcherson has a thing about mirrors. A year ago, you could’ve put good money on the fact that he hadn’t looked in one on any given day. It didn’t matter what was on his schedule, who he was seeing, if he’d be asked by a fan for a photo in unflattering light outside a drugstore, chances are, he was going into it mostly blind. He kind of still is.

“This is going to sound crazy,” says Hutcherson, “but most days, I will be outside in the world and all of a sudden remember that I don’t know what my face looks like.”

Twelve months ago, the extent of his pre-departure routine was – he mimes a door-side pat-down – “T-shirt, pants”. You know, phone, wallet, keys: check. “I could have a massive zit coming out of my brain, and I don’t even know what else.”

There are enough fan photos floating around the internet to prove that never really happened, but still, it’s no small thing to be so blasé about it. You’ll recognise Hutcherson’s boyish good looks from five years of The Hunger Games, where he played Peeta Mellark, the puppy-eyed sweetheart of Jennifer Lawrence’s dystopian princess, Katniss Everdeen. It’s because of those films that Hutcherson is asked for said fan photos daily. It’s also partly because of them that Hutcherson spent years avoiding the mirror before leaving the house.

To him, it was “a rocketship of attention and success”. Hutcherson, already a child actor from the age of nine in family films like Zathura and the soul-crushing Bridge to Terabithia, was “conditioned” to “the omnipresence of cameras everywhere.” Constant scrutiny like that, he tells me, will do crazy things to your self-esteem.

“You are always being watched. You’re potentially always being recorded and photographed, and those things directly impact your career and what roles you get. So… you’re aware of it,” he says. Suddenly, a teenager’s normal insecurities are available on demand for people to see in high-definition.

“I have rosacea, so I get red and flushed very easily if I’m in the sun, even if I have a hat and SPF 4,000,” he says. “I get acne breakouts, and that’s not cute. I’m a shorter guy, too. You’re aware of your weak points.” In the spotlight, “you’re on display for people to look at and judge, and they will say those things. They will find those insecurities and throw them in your face.”

His best defence was avoidance. “I would hide behind: ‘I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.’ Because I didn’t want to look at my own taste, you know what I mean?” And if you didn’t care – say, if you didn’t look in the mirror – then it wasn’t your problem in the first place.

But that was then. Now, at 33, he’s looking in the mirror more than ever. Real ones, yes, to double-check for zits, but the metaphorical kind, too. The one that reflects your worries, insecurities and fears back at you. And he’s getting better at liking what he sees, thanks to time spent away from the fishbowl of the internet, plus a little therapy – some he’s fresh from on the morning of our chat.

“I’ve started to really open up about it in therapy and talk about it more directly,” says Hutcherson, “as opposed to having fake confidence, but really you’re dying on the inside. I’ve kind of been embracing, like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m insecure about that. I feel that way. I don’t like that about my body. I think I’m unattractive in that way.’ And pointing at it and looking at it. That’s something that I’ve started to really grapple with in the last year.”

For Hutcherson, it’s been “scary” to “admit things about yourself that don’t feel cool to admit, but I think it’s the only hope that we might have at overcoming them or embracing them in a way that makes them not paralysing.”

That sort of growth comes at a good time. Off the back of a new HBO show, I Love LA, a horror film series under his belt with Five Nights at Freddy’s, a substantial block of action films, and a Hunger Games sequel he “cannot confirm nor unconfirm”, we’re in the midst of a white-hot Josh Hutcherson Renaissance. And no one’s more ready for it than him.

Maybe it’s the fact that he’s famously offline, or maybe it’s the nice-guy reputation that comes with playing Peeta. Either way, Hutcherson found himself in prime position for I Love LA, actor and writer Rachel Sennott’s cleverly cringey show about social media stars. The series follows talent agent Maia (Sennott) as she rides the rise to fame of her influencer best-friend-cum-client-and-maybe-enemy (Odessa A’zion). Hutcherson plays Maia’s boyfriend Dylan, ostensibly the only “normal” character in the show. He serves as an excellent foil to the mayhem: smart, grounding, understanding, quietly sexy; the sorbet palate-cleanser between bouts of vocal-fry screaming and lines of cocaine.

Hutcherson had a blast. “That whole cast is so fucking fun. It was such a breath of fresh air and not self-serious, but also making something that’s really great. I never wanted to leave set.

“Right away, day one, when we did the first table read, I was like, ‘Oh shit, everybody is showing up and doing something great,’” he says. He happily rattles off praise for his co-stars. Sennott “puts so much effort into it, but from the outside she made it look effortless.” New-gen darling A’zion “can do it all. She’s extremely funny. She’s a chameleon. She goes for it.” Jordan Firstman “always had these amazing one-liners that he would just improv that were incredible.”

The affection goes both ways.“I’ve been a fan of his for so long,” Sennott tells me over email. “There was something about him that made me feel instantly comfortable and I knew audiences would feel that way, too.” Firstman says, “He was the missing link the show needed. Someone to see it from the outside – someone not as connected to the internet or this weird world, both in real life and his character. He’s been doing this for a long time so he isn’t affected as much. He is just so grounded.”

I Love LA hit almost all of its marks, getting a slew of positive reviews and a greenlit season two (“I can’t wait to be back on set again,” says Hutcherson). It also had another, unexpected effect: the internet remembered how much it really fucking loves Josh Hutcherson.

Vulture crowned his portrayal of Dylan as a “straight-man revelation”. “I Still Want to Kiss Josh Hutcherson,” ran a headline on The Cut. TikTok edits featuring horned-up scenes of him fighting with Sennott – “Go to the fucking bedroom,” he growls over David Guetta’s “Turn Me On” – went triple-platinum. The comments included, “Oh my fucking God.”

Hutcherson has been mostly offline, building a private life with his girlfriend of 13 years, Claudia Traisac, in the hills of LA. But when you’re on a press tour with Gen Z actors, it’s hard to recuse yourself. Hutcherson stepped gamely back into the online world. In one TikTok, Sennott takes a long drag off his ear like a joint, HBO’s official account declaring, “Something to take the edge off.” He participated in low-key raunchy TikTok dances with Firstman to “Body Party” by Streetwize. Fans shouldn’t get their hopes up, though. Hutcherson’s trip to the epicentre of the internet was fun, but that’s all it was: a stopover. If anything, he says, it reminded him it’s still a vulnerable and frustrating place.

“I got some heat because I did a photo shoot with Jordan, and Jordan asked me something about being a [Taylor Swift fan], and I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m definitely not a Swiftie,’” he says. He meant it as neither judgement nor critique. But on the internet, simple, honest opinions about the type of music you like are not allowed. “All of a sudden it garnered this, ‘Fuck him! He’s a monster! Destroy him! He’s short! He hates her because he’s short!’ [He is 5ft 5in.] “It’s just like, whoa! I think she’s great. Her music is not my kind of music. That is why I don’t want to be online,” he says.

“I don’t need that energy,” he adds, of internet idolatry. Being a TikTok star doesn’t lend itself to his brand of acting, anyway. “It’s counterintuitive to my job, because if people know you more, you can’t disappear into characters. They see you as, ‘Oh, that’s Josh.’ You know what I mean? So, if you’re a fucking meme, people know you for the meme.”

Hutcherson has had his fair share of that. He’s the (begrudging) face of many a meme. Some he doesn’t mind. Others, he thinks, are pretty stupid – like the one from Hunger Games, where Mellark, a baker, inexplicably paints himself to camouflage into a rock. The whole scene is silly, he says. It should be noted, he did raise his concerns at the time. “I was like, ‘Look, I know this dude’s a baker, but how is he doing this? Baking sourdough is not painting. How the fuck did he do that?’” he says. “Why didn’t someone stop it? There are so many people who could have stopped it. They let it happen to me. I just lay there.”

That moment aside, it’s clear he still has a lot of love for The Hunger Games. There are actors who spend their entire careers trying to distance themselves from the franchise that made them – Hutcherson isn’t one of them. Not only does the series mean a lot to him, but he also recognises how much it means to everyone else.

“I could talk all day about Hunger Games,” he says. “I think [they] are amazing books. They’re fantastic movies. They stand for something important and real, especially in today’s world. The themes of authoritarianism and overpowering violent governments are very present. They didn’t listen to The Hunger Games.”

For Hutcherson, seeing the echoes of the fantasy dystopian movies he played as a teenager actually unfold in real life is “frustrating”. As politics gets more and more dire, more violent, more divisive, the comparisons become scarily real. Hutcherson is a realist, but he also understands the power of art. “Look, [that series] is not going to change the world. I think it’s a tool – of which there are many – a warning about giving government too much power and control. About not standing up against authoritarians. About stripping away civil rights, human rights. Being an American right now, it’s like… what the fuck is going on?”

The US, in his eyes, has “lost its way in so many ways. The fact that we’re at ICE raids in the streets and funding wars,” he says, referring to the US government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests. “The fact that there are a lot of Americans who support it – and many more who don’t – makes you feel like an alien in your own place. It’s like, how are we allowing this?”

You made a movie about it, I offer. “We made a saga about it,” he says.

Now that he’s wrapped the promo tour of I Love LA, you probably won’t see Hutcherson on your FYP for a little bit. He’s had enough online exposure this year to last him a lifetime. His brief cold plunge back into the internet was fun, but the aftershocks were heavy. “Being thrust out again in the world and online in such a big way, doing a bunch of press and being on TikTok, all those things made me feel very exposed,” says Hutcherson. “I started to get a lot of anxiety about it.”

His response could have gone either way. He could have logged off again, not looked at it – but he didn’t. He didn’t want to keep ducking mirrors, anxious about what he might see. “I have those same insecurities,” he says. The rosacea, the acne, his height, “haven’t gone away. I think I’ve learned how to cope and accept that these are my genetics. This is what I have.”

Therapy, and getting older and wiser, helped him reframe things. Hutcherson started by not looking at his insecurities “as negatives or as beauty faults, but part of your whole character, your whole existence,” he says. “I feel like it has led to me being able to handle it in a much more healthy, sane way, and not spiral out and feel like a piece of shit.”

In contrast to 10 years ago, in contrast to 18 months ago, Hutcherson feels “really good right now, like I’m owning myself and who I am and what I look like.” But he’s also aware that the self-improvement journey isn’t a one-and-done box to check. “That could change tomorrow. I could wake up and find out that some other guy got cast for a role that I wanted. Maybe he’s taller. That can trigger all that shit. It’s easier to keep a tiger in a cage than on a leash,” he says. “So I’m trying to keep it in the cage, but it is trying to get out sometimes.”

A solid grooming routine helps. Although he admits he swings between consistency and wanting to be “an agent of chaos”, he knows what works. He’s a disciple of the science-backed Mesoestetic range – which a facialist in Madrid put him onto – and which offers products formulated for his rosacea. First, a cooling serum for sensitive skin with aloe vera extract and calendula is “kind of blotted in around the face and neck”, which helps protect and strengthen his skin barrier. (He’d love to get on the retinol, but can’t factor in the purging time around his work.) Then, a hydrating moisturiser and, lastly, his only “absolute must”: sunscreen. He shouts out Supergoop!’s long-lasting and sweat-resistant Play formula, and its tinted Protec(tint) to “knock down redness, because I don’t want to have to wear make-up, but also I’m going to be seen and take pictures with people, so I don’t want to go cherry tomato either.”

For his hair, Hutcherson uses KeraFactor’s 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner (he doesn’t get any flak for using a 2-in-1 because “I don’t talk about it, but maybe after this interview comes out, I’ll get shit about it”), and a sea salt spray and clay from Hair by Samuel, a line by his hairstylist. He likes his hair to “have some grit to it.”

It’s nice to get into the weeds of this – how his hair feels, his skin barrier, the precision of his cut. After not giving a shit about it for a long time, now it feels important. This type of self-expression is “something I’ve always ignored,” says Hutcherson. “That was something that I thought I was above, I think. I got humbled in a way of recognising that what you wear and how you look does affect how you are. I’m trying to pay more attention to that.” Not just looking in the mirror. Seeing.

A version of this story originally appeared in the April/May 2026 issue of GQ with the title “Josh Hutcherson Is Liking What He Sees in the Mirror”

Via: GQ