Joshua David "Josh" Duhamel (born November 14, 1972) is an American actor and former fashion model. He first achieved acting success in 1999 as Leo du Pres on ABC’s All My Children and later as the chief of security, Danny McCoy, on NBC’s Las Vegas. He then began appearing in films, most prominently playing one of the protagonists, Captain/Major/Lieutenant Colonel William Lennox, in the box office hit Transformers as well as its sequels, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. He starred in Life as We Know It with Katherine Heigl. Duhamel was born in Minot, North Dakota, into a Catholic family, the son of Bonnie L. Kemper, a physical education teacher, and Larry Duhamel, an advertising salesman. He is of French-Canadian, Irish, English, German, and Norwegian ancestry. His parents divorced during his youth. Although he remains close to both, he grew up with his mother and his three younger sisters, Ashlee, Mckenzee and Kassidy. Duhamel attended Minot State University and played as the back-up quarterback for the university’s football team. He planned to attend dental school, but dropped out one-and-a-half credits shy of his undergraduate degree.