Before starring as teen heartthrob Jeremiah in The Summer I Turned Pretty, Gavin Casalegno attended Lovejoy High School in Lucas and had a career goal “to be at a red carpet that’s going to be really big,” he told the student paper in 2014.
The Dallas-born actor’s breakout role came in 2022, when Prime Video’s hit coming-of-age series debuted. At its core is a love triangle between protagonist Belly (Lola Tung) and her childhood friends, brothers Jeremiah (Casalegno) and Conrad (Christopher Briney).
The show, which also featured family drama and reckonings with grief, premiered its third and final season in mid July.
“From season 1 to season 3, I have undergone so much change and growth and maturity, specifically emotional maturity and intelligence — learning more about myself and the impact of the people and the family around me,” Casalegno told Man About Town for its spring/summer 2025 issue.
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The 25-year-old has been acting since he was four, he also told the British magazine. Casalegno could not be reached by The Dallas Morning News for an interview.
As a young teen, he acted in the 2014 biblical blockbuster Noah alongside industry veterans Russell Crowe and Emma Watson.
“He always had confidence,” said Casalegno’s former acting coach, Cathryn Sullivan. “Over the years, he got better and better.”
Gavin Casalegno acted in the 2014 sports drama ‘When the Game Stands Tall.'(Courtesy of Cathryn Sullivan)
Sullivan had a studio in Lewisville where Casalegno trained for nearly eight years. She counts North Texas cultural phenoms Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato among her former students.
Casalegno has returned to Sullivan’s class as an acting coach and aide, stepping in for breakup scenes, she said. The girls in her class, she added, “were like ‘Oh my God, this is wonderful.’”
The presence of Casalegno and other alumni who swing by shows her students “it’s normal to be able to have success … you just have to find a way to be resilient.”
Casalegno almost quit the craft a few years ago, according to Sullivan.
“He was like ‘Yeah, I’m giving up. This is hard. You get rejected all the time,’” she recalled him saying.
A few weeks after that, he booked a recurring role in eight episodes of Walker, a reboot of Walker, Texas Ranger.
When he got his part in The Summer I Turned Pretty, Casalegno was “super excited,” Sullivan said, adding “he didn’t know it was going to be a hit like it was.”
“Gavin did great in it. I thought he was the best one. Of course, I’m a little bit prejudiced,” she said.
Fans of the show have split allegiances between Team Jeremiah and Team Conrad, referring to the love triangle.
Sullivan, naturally, is #TeamJeremiah. “There’s no way I can be Team Conrad.”
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