Luke Kleintank is an American actor, best known for his role in the Amazon Prime original series The Man in the High Castle. He has also appeared in Bones, Pretty Little Liars, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and a number of other shows and films. In this biography, Kleintank tells his story in his own words.
Kleintank was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 18, 1990 (Luke Kleintank age: 31). At age two, he moved to Guadalajara, Mexico with his five older siblings and their parents, Melody Woodall and Roger Kleintank. The Kleintanks left Mexico after three years and settled in Stevensville, Maryland, where Luke lived for 12 more years. He attended school there and often participated in their theatrical productions as well as those based in the larger community, inspired to pursue acting as a career from a young age.
In April 2019, Kleintank sat down with uInterview to discuss his first childhood acting experience and how it set the course for his career so early on. He described his mother as someone who “loved to act” and “loved the theater” so much that she put on a production of the musical Carnival with Kleintank and his five older siblings.
“She was doing it and they didn’t have a part for me – I was six at the time – and so they made a part for me,” Kleintank told uInterview exclusively. “And I played a half-man, half-woman. And they put this little suit [on] half aside and a little dress on the other. They did one side of my face. And then my lines, man, I’ll never forget ‘em. I turned to one side. I said, ‘Am I a man, or am I a lady?” And I turned to the audience, said, ‘You decide.’”
Kleintank’s first professional acting role came in 2009 when he appeared in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit after moving to New York City to hone his craft. That year, he also secured single-episode stints on the shows Mercy and The Good Wife. In 2010, he was featured in two episodes of Parenthood.
From 2010 to 2011, Kleintank appeared in ten episodes of Gossip Girl as Elliot Leichter, Eric van der Woodsen’s temporary love interest. At the same time, he acted as Noah Newman throughout the first season of the soap opera The Young and the Restless. Kleintank left this role to play troubled teen Chris Minor on No Ordinary Family.
Kleintank’s 2011 was full of miscellaneous television roles. The actor appeared in one episode of the shows Greek, Law & Order: LA, and CSI: Miami. Between 2011 and 2014, Kleintank acted in nine episodes of the FOX series Bones as Finn Abernathy. He also appeared in one episode of The Good Wife (2012); two of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2013); and three of Person of Interest in 2013 and 2015.
One notable Kleintank role is that of Travis Hobbs on the teen mystery show Pretty Little Liars, which featured him in nine episodes from 2013 to 2014. 2014 was also the first year Kleintank appeared in films, including Dark Horse; Sacrifice; Phantom Halo; and 1000 to 1: The Cory Weissman Story.
2015 was a similarly busy year for Kleintank, who scored a major role in the movie Max and began filming for The Man in the High Castle. He played the main role of Joe Blake on this dark Amazon Prime original series between 2015 and 2018. The show won two Primetime Emmy Awards and was nominated for two more in 2016 and three in 2017.
2019 has a number of movies in store for Kleintank. He will star as Platt Barbour in The Goldfinch, Lieutenant Clarence Earle Dickinson in Midway, and Nick Holland in the police drama Crown Vic.
In his exclusive interview with uInterview, Kleintank discussed his upcoming film Crown Vic, in which he plays rookie cop Nick Holland. The movie picks up on Nick’s first shift as a trainee under Ray Mandel (Thomas Jane).
Kleintank explained that his character comes from a “stock” of cops, including a lieutenant father, and expects to learn “the ropes” from Mandel. “He’s a little nervous, you know, as any rookie cop would be,” Kleintank told uInterview exclusively, “and they get involved in a lot of drama throughout the night. There’s these cop killers that are on the loose and there’s, you know, just the kind of routine of what cops go through, and there’s a lot of twists and turns throughout the story.”
Reflecting on the filming process, Kleintank described how much work went into his and Jane’s acting. “We did a lot of rehearsals,” he said. “We kind of sat down and we kind of went over the script a lot at the hotel we were staying at.” Kleintank also revealed that most of the filming took place inside a “picture car” rather than on or outside studio sets, which created “kind of a silence … this feeling back and forth” between the two actors. “The dialogue was already there,” Kleintank told uInterview. “It’s all in the dialogue.”
When asked to identify the most challenging aspect of filming Crown Vic, Kleintank described running as “a pain in the ass” and said it was exhausting to film and re-film action scenes in police equipment. “We were in the actual gear – the vests, the guns, the mic, all of it,” he said, “running take after take after take after take chasing these guys … That was my toughest part.”
Check out the full exclusive uInterview below:
Given the size of Kleintank’s family – consisting of two parents, two sisters, three brothers, and ten nieces and nephews – he spends a good deal of time traveling and relaxing with them. He also enjoys outdoor activities, such as whitewater rafting and geocaching, and as traditional artistic endeavors like singing and dancing.
Kleintank was rumored to have dated co-star Alexa Davalos during the filming of The Man in the High Castle. In December 2018, he became engaged to his then-girlfriend Christina Vignaud.
“[My character] Joe is a young individual who is under the occupation of the Nazis. He’s an American Nazi living in New York under-occupied territory. You just go on a journey with him. He’s working for the resistance that is coming into play that is against this fascist lifestyle. You follow him on his journey to the neutral zone and discover who he is as a person; the people he meets and what he decides to do with his life. You see the world through the eyes of these characters, the decisions and the choices they make in an oppressed society.”
“[My mother] threw me into my first play, Carnival. Made a part for me. That’s when I knew I wanted to act.”
“[The Man in the High Castle] is an amazing show. It’s a piece of history that could have been. It’s intriguing and it’s going to make you think. It will make you question your own reality as an individual. I would hope that it would intrigue people to know their history. It’s a fun show and it’s a dark show. It’s a pretty incredible piece of work so it would be a shame not to see it.”
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