7 Movies & TV Shows You Know Lukas Gage From (& 3 Upcoming)
Floppy-haired, charismatic and handsome, Lukas Gage could easily have gone down the path of a typical romantic lead.
Instead, the 31-year-old's career to date has been defined by adventurous choices—the kind that’ve seen him pop up in several daring and provocative shows over the years, like Euphoria and The White Lotus. It's in those projects that directors and showrunners have made the most of Gage's talents—not least the unmistakable flicker of menace in his baby blue eyes.
The most recent to do so was Karim Aïnouz, a director whose latest movie, Rosebush Pruning (which just hit cinemas), should be in the running for most provocative of the year. The story was written by Efthimis Filippou, who you’ll know for his many collaborations with Yorgos Lanthimos—and most notably the early freaky ones like Alps and Dogtooth. For Pruning, Filippou returns to the incestuous vibe of those early projects with a story set in a modernist mansion in Catalonia where the only things anyone seems to talk about are fashion and the other word beginning with 'F'.
Jamie Bell, Callum Turner, Riley Keough and Gage play four siblings who are a little too close for comfort; the great Tracy Letts plays their blind dad; and there's also room for Elle Fanning and Pamela Anderson in supporting roles. It's often over-the-top and repellent to watch, but if you like a movie that goes fully freak mode, you should probably check it out.
Either way, if you’ve seen Pruning and were wondering where you know Gage from and what he's got coming up next, the list below—arranged in chronological order—is the right place to start.
(Two honourable mentions: Gage's small parts in Smile 2 (he plays the dealer at the start) and How to Blow Up a Pipeline are both excellent, as are the movies themselves!)
He came on some viewers' radars with the Netflix series American Vandal, but like many of the buzziest young actors of his generation, Gage got his real big break when he appeared on the first season of Euphoria as Tyler Clarkson—a kind of tragic character who gets beaten up by Jacob Elordi’s Nate and later takes the fall for another of Nate's crimes.
Having helped launch the careers of Elordi, Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, Colman Domingo, Sydney Sweeney and others, Euphoria showrunner Sam Levinson and HBO finally managed to get everyone back together for a climactic third season this year. It was no one's favourite of the three, but it wrapped things up all the same.
If you’ve become a fan of some of these actors recently and don’t mind shows with an abundance of Gen Z anxiety, you’ll probably vibe with it.
Along with Sydney Sweeney, Gage doubled up on his HBO respectability thanks to his great turn in Season 1 of The White Lotus. Now on the verge of its fourth season, Mike White’s anthology show about one-percenters behaving badly in luxurious resorts is widely regarded as one of the best original series of its time, and deservedly so.
And even though the budgets have gone up and the stars have gotten shinier in recent years, that first season is still a knockout. Gage’s role in it is relatively peripheral, but he got to appear in what might be the most iconic moment of Season 1.
Gage continued his run of playing freaky weirdos on popular streaming shows when he appeared as Adam Pratt in Season 4 of You.
The character, like so many in Gage’s back catalogue, is an indulgent and decadent playboy—this time the feckless son of a wealthy English family (which allows the Californian to lay it on thick with a British accent).
For the first season of You to take place outside the USA, the story followed Penn Badgley's Joe to the UK, where he assumes the identity of an English literature professor. While there, he comes into the orbit of some elite socialites, including Gage’s Pratt.
Of all the many feckless dudes who Gage has played in his career, the funniest might be Lars Olmstead. The character appears in the fifth and most recent season of Fargo: Noah Hawley’s terrific anthology-style reimagining of the Coen brothers’ 1996 Oscar-winning classic.
Season 5 is set in 2019, making it the most contemporary Fargo story yet. The plot centres on a woman who escaped from a toxic marriage with a religious fundamentalist some years before, and who is now trying to get her back.
The lead officer on the case is a typically Fargo-coded heroine—kind, resourceful, brave—but unlike Norm and his duck paintings in the original movie, her husband is only interested in playing golf. This, of course, is where Gage comes in.
The main conflict in Companion is between the two main characters: a couple played by Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher, one of whom has a lot more power in the relationship than they—and the movie—originally let on.
Like M3GAN 2.0, which was released a few months later, Companion is a movie about the creepier possibilities of A.I.-powered humanoid robots, but it’s also a solid horror revenge movie. Given our relationship with Gage, you’re probably imagining that he plays a nasty creep—but for this one, it’s probably best to go in a little blind.
Gage’s youthful looks have seen him regularly pop up in the buzziest Gen Z comedy shows. The most recent was Overcompensating, a queer coming-of-age story about a closeted jock hilariously attempting to keep up the straight charade during the first years of college.
Gage’s role is relatively small in terms of screen time, but it’s also consequential for the story as a whole—he plays Sammy, a former high school friend who becomes a love interest as the series goes on.
The most recent streaming hit to feature Gage in a prominent role was People You Meet on Vacation, a very watchable rom-com starring Emily Baader and Tom Blyth as longtime friends who meet once a year to go on vacation.
Like When Harry Met Sally, the movie is determined to remind us that the pair couldn’t be any different—but as the rules of rom-coms go, we know they're destined to end up together.
What makes the movie fun, of course, are all the bumps and obstacles along the way—and one of the most memorable is Gage’s Buck, a hunky guy who Baader’s character hooks up with on a camping trip early on.
Boys fans take note: Anthony Starr is apparently following up his generational run as Homelander to play none other than Andy Warhol in an upcoming movie about the pop art godfather’s relationship with Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Titled Samo Lives, it's the latest project of director Julius Onah, a filmmaker who broke out with 10 Cloverfield Lane a decade ago but who finds himself with something to prove after the tough break of Captain America: Brave New World. Starr currently has top billing alongside Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves, Elvis) as his doomed protégé. No word yet on Gage’s role, but with Kathryn Newton, Dane Dehaan and Jeffrey Wright all involved, it looks like a serious project.
