Last month he turned 18.

Friday, Logan Lerman’s poised to become a star in the title role of “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.” The fantasy adventure is in the Harry Potter [website] vein, only with Greek gods instead of wizardry.

“I’ve loved movies and I’ve just always wanted to be in films since I was like 5 years old or so,” said the Los Angeles native.

Lerman made his film debut in Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot” when he was 7. At 12, he had a turn on TV’s “Jack & Bobby.”

“That’s where I started, really,” he said in a one-on-one interview at Manhattan’s Empire State Building (which figures prominently in the movie’s climax).In “Percy Jackson,” he plays a fatherless teen with dyslexia, disciplinary issues, a stepfather he hates and a mother (Catherine Keener) who’s been kidnapped and taken to hell. It turns out Percy’s a demigod, the son of Poseidon – the downside is he has to fight monsters such as a fire-breathing Hydra and snake-haired Medusa (Uma Thurman).

Standing in for Hogwarts is Camp Half-Blood, where Percy learns to fight and finds allies in Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and Grover (Brandon T. Jackson).

Lerman was the only actor tested by director Chris Columbus (the first two “Harry Potter” films, “Home Alone”).

“I saw Logan in ‘3:10 to Yuma’ and just felt he was Percy,” Columbus said.

Lerman spent months with Columbus working on a Brooklyn accent, followed by “sword training, scuba diving, kickboxing, martial arts and all the flying.”

It worked. The buzz has Lerman a leading contender to play Peter Parker/Spider-Man.

Source: Boston Herald