Some actors spend years trg to break into Hollywood. Connor Storrie and Nicholas Galitzine are currently operating in the opposite direction — as if Hollywood is actively reshaping itself around them.
One is fresh off turning Heated Rivalry into a full-blown obsession and now stepping into his first major post-breakout role in Criminal Minds: Evolution. The other keeps rotating bween prince, pop star, fantasy icon, and now 1980s supermodel biopic subject like he’s collecting identities the way most people collect frequent flyer miles.
At this point, it’s less about who is rising and more about how fast everyone else is expected to adjust. Because if there’s a shared theme here, it’s this: both Storrie and Galitzine are now firmly in the category of actors whose casting alone feels like a genre shift.
Connor Storrie’s “post-breakout glow-up era”
When exactly did Connor Storrie become unavoidable? Was it the Episode 5 phone call with that suspiciously perfect Russian dialect? The Vegas hotel intensity opposite Ilya Rozanov? Or, more honestly, the first time Heated Rivalry paused just long enough to make the internet lose its collective mind?
Whatever the entry point, Criminal Minds: Evolution clearly got there early. Before Heated Rivalry turned him into a global talking point, Storrie had already filmed what was meant to be a one-episode guest role on the Paramount+ procedural. A quick in-and-out appearance. A professional handshake. Nothing more. Then he walked onto set as Lance Kingston.
Series creator Emily Messer told Vulture that the character — “a charming narcissist with a deep sense of entitlement” — was originally not supposed to expand beyond a limited appearance.
New exclusive clip of Connor Storrie as Lance Kingston in Criminal Minds: Evolution. pic.twitter.com/QjBsd7xW8r
— Connor Storrie Updates (@connorstupdates) June 10, 2026
“We were very much interested in finding somebody that would stand out a bit. Connor won that, hands down,” she says.
At the time, there was no fandom momentum behind him yet. No viral edits. No slow-burn internet obsession. Just raw presence doing what raw presence does. And apparently, that was enough.
“We were like, ‘Okay, I know he was important for episode four, but we’ve got to make him more integral to the rest of the season’,” Messer recalls.
The reason is almost disarmingly simple:
“100 percent because he was so compelling.”
Which is industry language for: we are absolutely keeping this man.
Meanwhile, Nicholas Galitzine is doing… everything at once
If Storrie is in his “breakout escalation phase,” Nicholas Galitzine is somewhere in his “how many transformations can one career physically hold” era.
He’s currently on screen as He-Man in Masters of the Universe, a role that already feels like it was designed to make people briefly forget how gravity works. And now he’s stepping into something very different, but equally loaded: portraying Hoyt Richards in a biopic reportedly circling Gus Van Sant.
Which means, yes, we are now at the point where Galitzine is moving from mythical strength to high-fashion mythology without even pausing to catch his breath.
Richards, for context, wasn’t just a model in the 1980s. He was one of the defining faces of male supermodel culture, working with Gianni Versace, Valentino, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, and photographed by Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, and Steven Meisel — essentially the visual hall of fame of “how did one person end up in all of these images.”
He also appeared in Six Days, Seven Nights alongside Harrison Ford and Anne Heche, which almost feels like a footnote compared to the rest of his career. Then the story shifts.
Richards became involved with The Eternal Values cult, whose leader reportedly targeted young models and manipulated them into financial and emotional dependence. Richards is said to have donated millions before eventually escaping in 1999, later speaking about coercion and control.
It’s already the subject of HBO’s documentary Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult. Now it’s heading toward dramatization — with Galitzine stepping into the center of it. Which, frankly, feels like casting designed to make audiences pause and stare at the screen a little too long.
Two actors, one shared problem: being extremely watchable
What makes Storrie and Galitzine such a strange pairing in the cultural moment is how similarly they function in completely different genres.
Storrie’s trajectory is rooted in intensity — hockey rinks, crime dramas, psychological tension, and roles where characters seem one conversation away from either breaking down or taking control of a room.
Galitzine’s trajectory is the opposite surface aesthetic: royalty, fantasy armor, high fashion, and real-life figures whose existence already reads like curated cinema.
And yet both careers are now operating on the same principle: presence first, explanation later. Storrie is currently stacking projects at a pace that includes A24’s Peaked, Craig Zobel’s Turpentine opposite Melissa McCarthy, and a mysterious Halina Reijn project — all while Heated Rivalry Season 2 moves toward production.
Galitzine, meanwhile, continues shifting between genres with the calm energy of someone who refuses to be typecast by physics. At this rate, it feels less like two separate careers and more like two parallel experiments in how far charisma can be stretched before it becomes structural.
The takeaway
Connor Storrie is entering his “Hollywood can’t stop writing more scenes for him” phase. Nicholas Galitzine is in his “every role looks like it was styled by a different obsession” phase. And somehow, both are accelerating at the same time. Which is either a coincidence… or the start of a very attractive era in casting decisions.
Connor Storrie’s Criminal Minds: Evolution arc begins June 11 on Paramount+. Nicholas Galitzine’s Hoyt Richards biopic is currently in development.