Caleb McLaughlin
Caleb McLaughlin is an actor, born 2001.
Caleb McLaughlin began on Broadway, playing young Simba in The Lion King, and it shows. Stage children arrive on a set already knowing how to hit a mark and how to be loud on purpose. Born in Carmel, New York in 2001, he took the small television parts that follow a Broadway credit, and then he got Lucas Sinclair.
Stranger Things ran from 2016 to 2025 and he grew up inside it, which is a strange professional situation: the same character, the same co stars, across most of a childhood. Lucas is also the least indulged of the show's kids, the sceptic who wants the plan checked before anyone runs into the dark, and McLaughlin plays him with an impatience the writing does not always give him credit for.
The film work has been chosen carefully. He led Concrete Cowboy, his first leading role in a feature, and had a supporting part in the drama High Flying Bird. What sits in the credits here is the sports drama Shooting Stars, where he plays Dru Joyce III, the horror film The Deliverance, a role in The Book of Clarence, and a steadily growing pile of voice work.
The New Edition Story, where he played the young Ricky Bell, remains the best evidence that he can work outside the tone Stranger Things trained him in.
Movies (5)
TV (13)
- Stranger Things (2016)
- The Jonathan Ross Show (2011)
- The Boys Presents: Diabolical (2022)
- Final Space (2018)
- The Real (2014)
- Shades of Blue (2016)
- James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction (2018)
- Good Morning America (1975)
- Extra (1994)
- Ultra City Smiths (2021)
- Geeking Out (2016)
- Beyond Stranger Things (2017)
- The New Edition Story (2017)
Where to start with Caleb McLaughlin
There is no route around Stranger Things, so start there, but watch it with Lucas in mind rather than the plot. He is the one asking practical questions while everybody else is having a feeling, and the performance gets noticeably sharper by the fourth season.
Then The New Edition Story, the better acting showcase, because a biographical miniseries gives him a real person to hold onto and a period to play rather than a mood to sustain.
Shooting Stars is the mainstream sports picture and it is perfectly fine. The Book of Clarence puts him in genuinely strange company. The Deliverance asks more of him than the film around him earns.
His two most interesting film credits, Concrete Cowboy and High Flying Bird, are not among the credits listed here, and Concrete Cowboy is the one to seek out if you want to see him carry something alone.
Stranger Things
Nine years as Lucas Sinclair, which means his entire adolescence happened on camera. The companion shows and making-of material are here too, and they are worth a look for how visibly the cast grew up.
The films
The work he has chosen away from the show, and it is noticeably heavier. Shooting Stars casts him as a young Dru Joyce, and The Book of Clarence is the most interesting film he has been in so far.