By THE REASON WHY someone might walk away from one vocation towards another is rarely as clean as the story they tell about it later. For actor Lincoln Younes, the official version goes something like this: gifted junior soccer player, fading passion, discovered acting, never looked back. The reality, as with most origin stories, is considerably messier.
Younes grew up moving. His mother was a journalist, which meant a childhood spent following her work between schools and cities, absorbing newsrooms that helped develop a social fluency and adaptability that perhaps helped prod his natural instincts later on.
Soccer was the constant – he was kicking a ball around from the age of three, and for a long time a professional career seemed not just possible but likely. “So many aspects of it were healing,” Younes tells Esquire.
“Knowing my function on a team, the mutual connection with people over something active and away from yourself, the collective goal of working to achieve something together.” Then, gradually, it wasn’t enough. “Over time, the passion faded and I hit a limit with my ability and hunger for it.” As they say, when one door closes . . .
What opened instead was, on the face of it, an improbable alternative. Younes was, by his own account, a genuinely shy kid. The type who loved the idea of performing while being, according to him, constitutionally unable to actually do it. What he could do was watch. His mother struck a deal with her editors: free cinema tickets in exchange for written reviews, which meant the young Younes became a daily fixture at the local theatre (and, effectively, an unpaid junior critic before he was old enough to drive).
An early favourite was Mystic River.
“Just the way it navigated moral responsibility, loyalty and the deep pain and nature versus nurture was visceral,” he says. “Tim Robbins in that is devastatingly brilliant.” Robin Williams, too, was an early touchstone, whose performances contained “technical precision meeting palpable humanity”, Younes says.
In his early teens, an opportunity came up to travel for a global Rock Eisteddfod tour performing Peter Pan. Younes went along, bluffed his way through, and something shifted on that stage that hadn’t shifted on any football pitch. Two years later, his family relocated to Melbourne so he could pursue acting seriously, and at 16, he auditioned for the Australian drama Tangle, competing for the role of a brash teenager with a complicated relationship with his father, played by Ben Mendelsohn. He got it. Three seasons followed, working alongside the country’s best actors on scripts that asked something genuine of him.
“I loved the idea of performing and the escape of stories and imagination, but didn’t quite have the confidence or self-esteem back then to risk actually doing it. That’s come much later and is still something that can be a struggle.”
What followed Tangle was a rapid-fire sequence of change and opportunity. A brief, abandoned law degree. Three years on Home and Away. A Lost Boys reboot, cast and ready, shelved by the pandemic. A farewell party thrown ahead of a Los Angeles move, followed by a return to Sydney a few weeks later for a local job.
Swings and roundabouts.
I loved the idea of performing and the escape of stories and imagination, but didn’t quite have the confidence or self-esteem back then to risk actually doing it. That’s come much later and is still something that can be a struggle.”
Right now, though, the calendar is full.
In June, he begins shooting an as-yet-unannounced crime thriller series. Last King of the Cross, in which he played Kings Cross nightclub impresario John Ibrahim opposite Tim Roth and became Paramount+’s most-streamed local series, is heading into a third season with scripts written and a start date expected later in the year. A completed feature, The Only One, is headed for a festival run. And most immediately, there is The Season, a six-part darkly comedic thriller set among the international elite during Hong Kong’s opulent boating season, premiering on June 17 on Hulu and Disney+.
Younes says he is more selective now about what he says yes to.
“The creatives involved is now more important than the character,” he says. “You can have a phenomenal character or story, but if it’s not being guided by a deft hand, the potential can be wasted.”
The characters he has chosen to inhabit across a varied career have also, he says, quietly recalibrated his understanding of masculinity – what it looks like, what it costs, what it conceals. “Depending on the character, I do get to explore more of the shadow parts on screen that perhaps I wouldn’t want to risk looking at in my everyday life,” he says. “This exploration then informs the human I attempt to be away from my work.”
Off-screen, how Younes presents himself follows its own considered logic. He approaches getting dressed the way he approaches a role – with an understanding that the surface communicates something, whether you intend it to or not. Fit comes first, always. “If it fits well, you feel good and that energy changes the way the outfit is perceived by others and more importantly how you perceive yourself,” he says. “No ill-fitting clothes ever carry well, regardless of how pricey they may be.”
In practice, his own wardrobe is built around staples cycled through with minor variations. Loose-fitting monochromes, a hat, occasionally a fun sneaker or accessory to break the pattern. “An outfit that hopefully looks a bit effortless, but has at least one element of character,” he says. The foundation, if pressed, is straightforward: a classic denim pant, some well-cut tees, a textured knit, a tailored suit, a good belt, fun socks and some retro kicks. It is a list that resists trend entirely, which is why it works so well.
It is also, not coincidentally, the kind of wardrobe philosophy that maps neatly onto his admiration for Ralph Lauren, a brand he talks about in terms that have less to do with aesthetics than with staying power. “It means longevity, legacy and patience,” he says. “If you build a brand with strong stories, classic foundations and a respect and reliability for your market, you earn the rare title of being timeless. A brand like RL is this because it knows and honours where it’s come from and it allows that to inform where it’s going, taking some educated risks along the way.”
He could, with minor adjustments, be describing the career he is trying to build.
Fashion assistant: Kailee Waller
