Lucas Grabeel
Lucas Grabeel is an actor, born 1984.
Ryan Evans was written as an obstacle. In High School Musical he is half of the theatre-kid double act standing between the leads and the school show, a part that exists to be beaten, and Grabeel turned him into the most watchable thing in the trilogy by declining to play him as a villain. Ryan is enthusiastic, immaculately dressed and completely uninterested in the plot's opinion of him, and by the third film the audience is straightforwardly on his side.
That was 2006 to 2008, and it made him one of the most recognisable faces the Disney Channel had. He had already done two Halloweentown films as Ethan Dalloway, and he went from High School Musical straight into Smallville as a young Lex Luthor and as Conner Kent, which is a strange and underrated stretch of casting.
The interesting turn came next. Rather than chase teen-idol leads he took Toby Kennish in Switched at Birth, a long-running family drama that let him age out of the role type, and built a substantial second career in voice acting: Gustav across DreamWorks Dragons and Race to the Edge, the title role in Pinky Malinky, Deputy Peck in Sheriff Callie's Wild West, Jiku in Elena of Avalor, work on My Adventures with Superman.
The credit that fits nowhere else is Danny Nicoletta in Milk, which put him in a serious film in 2008 and then never came up again. It is the road not taken, and the voice work has been the more rewarding one anyway.
Movies (9)
TV (10)
Where to start with Lucas Grabeel
High School Musical is unavoidable, and you should watch it without irony, because the film is far better built than its reputation suggests and Grabeel is a large part of the proof. Ryan is written as a supporting antagonist and he is the one you remember.
High School Musical 2 is the best of the three for him by a distance; the summer setting gives Ryan room to be something other than an obstacle. Switched at Birth is the grown-up work and the reason to take him seriously as a dramatic actor, a family series that handles its subject with more care than most network drama manages. Milk is the prestige credit, small but real. For the voice work, DreamWorks Dragons is the sturdiest and Pinky Malinky is where he carries a whole show. Halloweentown High is nostalgia only.
High School Musical
Ryan Evans is a permanent identity for a certain age cohort, and the three films plus the Disney Channel run are what that career looked like from the inside at twenty.
The voice work
Where the career actually went. My Adventures with Superman gives him a genuinely warm Clark Kent, which is about as far from a song-and-dance role as it is possible to get.
The rest
The dramatic television and the film credits. Switched at Birth was five seasons and the most substantial live-action work, and Milk is the serious film part almost nobody connects to him.