Luke Kleintank

New York pavement and first steps

Luke Kleintank arrived in New York before the age of twenty with a determination that bordered on recklessness. He wasn't chasing quick fame on the red carpet. His real goal was to learn the craft on the community theater stages of Maryland before tackling the big city's pavement.

And he got it earlier than expected.

In 2009, he landed his first professional role in the series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. It was a brief appearance, but it got casting directors to put his name on their radar. Soon after came his stint on Gossip Girl, playing Elliot Leichter over several weeks of intense filming.

Moral ambiguity as a tool

His mass recognition came in 2015 with the premiere of The Man in the High Castle. Playing Joe Blake was a psychological challenge because of the ambiguity of a character trapped in a Nazi dystopia. Kleintank had to handle the tension of a spy who never quite fits in on either side, under a suffocating creative direction.

During the three seasons he stayed on the series, he worked under the pressure of a high-budget production. But the actor decided that his career couldn't stall in genre television and looked for film projects that demanded a different physical range.

In 2019, he took part in the adaptation of the novel The Goldfinch. The film received mixed reviews on its release, but his performance as Platt Barbour stood out for its restraint in front of the camera. He shared the set with figures such as Nicole Kidman during a shoot that spanned several international locations.

Risk is her currency.

Because Kleintank prefers roles where silence says more than dialogue, in 2022 he starred in The Good Neighbor alongside Jonathan Rhys Meyers in a complicated shoot in Latvia. The film explores guilt after a fatal accident and grossed only one million dollars at the worldwide box office.

Goodbye to the Budapest badge

CBS signed him in 2021 to lead the cast of FBI: International. For three years he played Special Agent Scott Forrester, and he moved to Budapest to film most of the episodes of the franchise. This stage brought him his greatest commercial exposure to a mass television audience.

But in April 2024, he announced his definitive exit from the series to focus on his family life. His departure forced the writers to wrap up his storyline abruptly in the final episode of the third season.

Production on the fourth installment began in Budapest without him on the set.