Stu Tredway will tell anyone who listens that he's been working all of his life in pursuit of a great dream: more than anything else he wants, in years to come, when his great-grand-children's children occupy the land of hope and dreams, to be remembered. Jude Tredway, son of the aforementioned Stu, is of the opinion that such a dream is a bit of a waste of time. How will his father know, when his expiration date comes, that he's done enough to be remembered? And if there is such thing as an afterlife, it's a hell of a long wait until the era of great-grand-children's children. Any feeling of accomplishment will surely be drowned out by the sheer boredom that comes with waiting so long for gratification. No. The concept of being remembered might have been a prominent ideal in the household that he was raised in, but Jude reckons it's entirely more important to do something you love doing with the least measure of "being serious" possible. And that explains a lot.

Born in the summer of 1983, Jude was the first child of a rock musician and a sitcom actress and, yes, his naming was influenced by the Beatles song that the whole world knows the words to. Brought into a family that was almost constantly on the go -- his father had tours and recording sessions; his mother had filming and various other Hollywood events -- it was practically a requirement that Jude become independent (or as independent as a young child can be) from a young age. He was left to his own devices in the corner of recording studios or dressing rooms, left to form his own opinions about the world. When he was five years old, his sister Willa was born. Although the busy work schedules of his parents meant that the time they all spent as a family unit was very limited (a major contributing factor to the divorce proceedings that went down when Jude was a teenager) he does consider himself quite close to the members of his family. He did decide early on, however, that no matter what he did in the future, he didn't want it to control his life in the way that his parents' careers controlled theirs.

Of course, child labor laws guaranteed that the first roles that went on his imdb page were anything but controlling. Luck handed him the opportunity to appear in Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street -- his mom knew a casting agent who knew John Hughes, cronyism at its finest -- and that set the wheels in motion. Odd projects cropped up here and there, most prominently the voice role of Andy in Pixar's Toy Story, but Jude grew up in the affluent area of Los Angeles -- it was practically commonplace for kids to disappear for two weeks because they had filming commitments elsewhere. It wasn't until he was 18 and a high school graduate that he stepped properly into the acting profession with a role on The O.C., a teen drama success story, where he played a character credited with making geeks cool again. That, Jude thinks, is probably not true. The show ended in 2007 (something he was grateful for and to this day he makes no attempt at hiding that sentiment) and projects didn't dry up in the way that some had speculated. They were smaller endeavours and he was receiving considerably less coverage in tabloid newspapers but that was an added bonus. Fame wasn't something he cared about -- though he could count the number of people who believed him when he said so on one hand. Stu Tredway made very clear his ambition to be remembered. Why would Jude Tredway want anything different?

Here's why: although he wasn't entirely torn up about his parents' divorce (it had been looming on the horizon for forever) he remains convinced that it probably could've been fixed if they'd taken the time to fix it. Arrogant as it may be, Jude's of the opinion that there's very few lost causes in the world. People just aren't trying hard enough, or maybe they don't really want it. There's nothing wrong with those things either; if his parents had just faced facts and said that they didn't want to be married anymore, or that they didn't want to try at being married anymore, then that would be an entirely different situation to the 'irreconcilable differences' that they cited as their reasoning. They didn't though. They created animosity where there probably didn't have to be animosity, and who wants to live through that? Who wants that to be something that's remembered in conjunction with them? Why would anyone care more about simply being remembered than about how they're remembered? Jude is by no means going to be remembered as some kind of saint, of that he's well aware, but at least he stands a chance at being remembered as someone who did what they wanted to do and didn't bullshit around about anything and put honesty and loyalty above most other things in life, if he's remembered at all.

It's looking increasingly as though he will be. Although he wouldn't proclaim to be a member of the A-list, the number of high-profile roles he's been making his own over the past few years means that people are fast learning his name. 2013 was a year where he hardly stopped promoting films, embedding his face into the public consciousness. To be remembered you have to be known, and even after a self-imposed 'break' from being in front of a camera, Jude Tredway is on his way to being known. His next step is working out what to do with that.