Lucas Hedges

 ( 1996 Births ) 

Hedges next joined the cast of Kenneth Lonergan's independent drama Manchester by the Sea (2016). In it, he played Patrick Chandler, a 16-year-old boy dealing with the recent death of his father, who is left in the care of his unwilling and troubled uncle (played by Casey Affleck). The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph wrote, "Hedges, phenomenal, fights off every cliché of 'troubled' teenagerhood and gives us a gruff, sympathetic boy with a tearaway sex drive." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian said his performance was "glorious" and added that he "makes a tremendous troubled 16-year-old." It earned over $78 million against its $9 million budget. For his work, Hedges won a Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, among others.

The following year, Hedges made his stage debut as the lead in the Trip Cullman-directed off-Broadway play Yen, penned by the playwright Anna Jordan. The production ran from February 19 to March 4 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Taking note of his performance as an aggressive and violent teenager who shares a troubled relationship with his half-brother, Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote that he "delivers an expert anatomy of an adolescent on the edge of explosion". Hedges was nominated for the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play and won the Theatre World Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Debut Performance. Also in 2017, Hedges had supporting roles in two films—Greta Gerwig's directorial debut Lady Bird and Martin McDonagh's crime drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, both of which were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The cast of the latter film were awarded with the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast.

Also in 2018, Hedges made his first appearance on Broadway theatre in a revival of Kenneth Lonergan's play The Waverly Gallery, alongside Elaine May, at the John Golden Theatre. He played the role of a teenager coping with his grandmother's Alzheimer's disease. Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune credited him for effectively conveying the "frustration family members feel when one of their own starts to decline." Honey Boy, a drama penned by and co-starring Shia LaBeouf about his childhood and relationship with his father, marked Hedges's first film release of 2019. Hedges and Noah Jupe played Otis Lort, a character based on LaBeouf, at different ages. Reviewing the film for Entertainment Weekly, Leah Greenblatt wrote that Hedges "doesn’t seem to have found a role yet he can’t fully inhabit; his Otis is raw and furious, and genuinely funny." He next took on a supporting part in Trey Edward Shults' Waves, a drama about the emotional journey of a suburban family, which led Peter Debruge of Variety to consider it "an impactful reminder of how much the actor can bring to a smaller role".

In 2020, Hedges appeared in the miniseries for Quibi to raise money for World Central Kitchen. Also that year, he starred alongside Michelle Pfeiffer in the black comedy French Exit, and was part of the ensemble cast of Steven Soderbergh's comedy film Let Them All Talk. In his review for the former film, IndieWire's David Ehrlich was appreciate of Hedges' "subdued but strikingly thoughtful performance". The following year, he appeared in an episode of the FX anthology series The Premise.

Hedges took a small break from acting to focus on writing, and returned to the stage in a 2023 West End theatre production of Brokeback Mountain at @sohoplace, in which he starred as Ennis Del Mar opposite Mike Faist's Jack Twist. Comparing his performance to Heath Ledger's portrayal of Del Mar in the 2005 film of the same name, theatre critic Matt Wolf of The New York Times wrote that Hedges "may not have the immediate physical command that Ledger had onscreen, but he shares his late predecessor’s furrowed brow and a sense of roiling anguish". The following year, he had a supporting role in the biographical film Shirley, about the 1972 presidential run of Shirley Chisholm.

Hedge's next release, Sorry, Baby, starring, written and directed by Eva Victor, premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Commenting on his role as a kind neighbour of the film's troubled protagonist (played by Victor), Peter Debruge considered it "perfectly suited to Lucas Hedges’ uniquely sensitive energy". He is set to star alongside Daniel Radcliffe in the war thriller Trust the Man.