The 36-year-old actor saw his career take off thanks to his role in the hit series: in France as in the United States, prestigious projects pile up after a complicated start to his career.
New film for a new star: Lucas Bravo is the main actor in Libreeighth feature film directed by Mélanie Laurent, available this Friday, November 1 on Prime Video. He plays Bruno Sulak, a pacifist and whimsical robber who raged in Paris in the 1980s. The 36-year-old actor thus shines for the first time in a leading role, a thousand miles from the one who revealed him: the one of the handsome Gabriel, the Parisian cook who melts Lily Collins in the rosewater series Emily in Paris.
It is undoubtedly this program created by Darren Star (Sex & The City), launched in 2020 on Netflix, which put the spotlight on this previously unknown actor. This modern fairy tale about the amorous wanderings of an American expatriate in Paris has established itself as a global phenomenon, giving Lucas Bravo’s career a decisive turning point. And opening the doors of cinema to him, in France and in the United States.
On both sides of the Atlantic
This is evidenced by the young director’s recent filmography: in the space of three years, he filmed with Isabelle Huppert and Lambert Wilson (the Franco-British film A dress for Mrs. Harris) as well as with Julia Roberts and George Clooney (he makes an appearance in the romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise).
“It was the most extraordinary experience of my life,” he told GQ. “I couldn’t believe I got this job. Every day (on set, editor’s note) I woke up with the feeling of being outside my own body.”
Next December, he will play the terrifying neighbor of Women on the balconya new film by and with Noémie Merlant, which earned her the chance to climb the steps of Cannes for the first time last May. Alternating between major American productions and French auteur cinema, he cultivates a balance:
“I identified the United States as the blockbuster section of the career,” he explains to BFMTV.
“We put a little aside to be able to make small independent films which don’t put butter in the beans, but which allow us to play characters who stimulate us. That’s how I imagine things, with the little of experience that I have. And, perhaps, the carelessness of the beginnings.
Ten years of wandering
Debuts that have been a long time coming. Born in Nice on March 26, 1988, Lucas Bravo started acting at the age of 15: “It was an emergency for me,” he confides to Konbini. A fan of Alain Delon, Kevin Costner, Denzel Washington and Patrick Dewaere, he grew up in a traveling family at the time, moving according to the professional imperatives of his father – the footballer Daniel Bravo. With his two brothers, his sister and their parents, they live between France and Italy, where he spent “the best years of (his) childhood”.
His first appearance in fiction dates back to 2013, when he played in a few episodes of the series Under the Saint-Tropez sun. Kim Chapiron offered him his very first film salary the following year, with a small role in The Cream of the Cream. He then sought to professionalize and joined the Actors Factory, a Parisian comedy school, as reported by Numero.
This academic background did not immediately bear fruit: in addition to participating in an episode of More beautiful life in 2016, Lucas Bravo distinguished himself in short films without finding fame. And puts her good looks to good use by devoting herself to modeling, with some success; we see it in particular in a Chanel ad in 2017.
Until he landed the role of Gabriel in Emily in Parisa series whose influence is such that it would have helped boost tourism in the capital – and that Brigitte Macron herself made a short appearance in one of the episodes of season 4.
His “sexy chef” character propelled him to the rank of international sex symbol: “Here is Lucas Bravo, your new French fantasy”, was the headline in British Vogue shortly after the series’ launch. His Instagram account is a selection of the magazine covers that he covers all over the world (failing to give any clues about his private life, which he keeps carefully to himself).
“Still everything to prove”
This sudden exposure does not only do him good. In an interview for The Times UK, he explained in 2021 that “fame is the worst thing that can happen to you”, presenting his beauty as an obstacle to his career (“In France, we don’t look for beautiful people, we want broken faces”, he declared, before adding: “For a long time, I was exclusively offered roles as a stupid sports coach”).
Comments which earned him a vitriolic article from the American magazine Vulture, owned by New York Magazine, entitled A guy you don’t even recognize complains about his crazy fame: “Being hot? Horrible. But being French and hot? A curse that goes beyond the scope of human understanding”, the article said ironically.
A lesson that Lucas Bravo seems to have learned. It is with complete humility that he tells BFMTV that he is “still at the learning stage in (his) career”: “I still have everything to prove, especially in French cinema.” A “very demanding”, “very cutting-edge” cinema, he underlines.
Goodbye Emily?
In the same tone, he displays a distance from the boost his career is experiencing:
“It’s work, meetings, castings and auditions,” he recalls.
“I’m very focused on staying in touch with good projects, and above all not settling into comfort. It’s when we get out of this discomfort that we stop producing interesting things.”
A risk he is not taking for the moment: he is currently filming the French series Merteuil inspired by Dangerous connectionswith Diane Kruger and Vincent Lacoste. And he will star opposite James McAvoy in a British thriller, Turn Up the Sun!. What to do d’Emily in Paris a case a little too narrow?
“It lacks risk,” he regretted recently in an interview for IndieWire. “It makes me question my desire to be part of season 5.”
