Lester Cohen/WireImageJosh Lucas is ready to tie the knot...thanks to a frightening experience with a mountain lion.
The J. Edgar star revealed on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night that he proposed to his girlfriend shortly after he came face-to-face with the intimidating beast while shooting a movie in Big Sur, Calif.
So, what went down prior to the proposal? And, wait—who's he marrying?!
The lovely brunette by his side at the J. Edgar premiere remains nameless for now (if that's even her!)—but we have a feeling Lucas won't be able to keep a lid on her identity much longer. (A rep for the actor didn't immediately return a request for comment.)
A longtime bachelor, the 40-year-old Lucas was romantically linked over the years to Anne Hathaway, Rachel McAdams and Salma Hayek, among others.
But last night, the smitten star told Leno about taking his now-fiancée with him to shoot a "very low budget movie" in Big Sur. He was given a $30-a-day hotel allowance, which they used to stay at an "eco resort"—aka, a trailer—in thie woods.
Overall, the place was "absolutely wonderful," Lucas cracked, but as the couple continued to venture back and forth into the wild, his lady began to fear what might be lurking in the shadows.
"As the week went on, the movie started shooting later and later and, on a Thursday night, we ended up getting home at around 3 o'clock in the morning," Lucas told Leno.
"So my girlfriend at the time and I, luckily we both had flashlights, so we began the 20-minute hike up the hill. It was black—pitch black. So we get to the top and we get into that lovely little trailer and immediately she starts hyperventilating and just can't even breathe. And I'm like, ‘Baby, what's wrong?' and she's like, ‘I'm so scared, the most scared I've ever been in my life because I know that we are about to be attacked by a mountain lion.' And I'm like, ‘Honey, this is Big Sur, there are no mountain lions."
But, sure enough, the next day...
"That night, I then go home at 4 o'clock in the morning and realize I don't have a flashlight," Lucas continued. "And as I'm going up, I get to the point where I realize I can see nothing...I hear, totally serious, two big breaths, and six feet above me, I see the very slight glint of the eyes of a huge [mountain lion] and I literally proceed to do what I had just read in the instructions. And I started screaming and yelling and literally being as crazy as I could be, it padded off and just slowly went away and I worked my way into the trailer and I got in and I decided at that moment that this woman was the woman for me."
And there you have it.
Congrats to the happy, low-key couple!
—Additional reporting by Natalie Finn