Want to know what the future holds? You need to meet the people building it. In our series Who’s Next, we profile rising stars of culture, tech, style, wellness and beyond.
Most people fill their bucket lists with similar goals: run a marathon, go skydiving, travel the world. But Kyle Allen isn’t most people.
“I would like to be punched in the face by Jackie Chan,” he says, before laughing and adding a quick clarification: “In a professional sense, not because I offended him. If I’m in that position, my life is so good, I don’t think I’ll need much else. I think that’s a great marker for Kyle’s doing phenomenal.”
Jacket and pants Ami Paris, T-shirt Patrick Assaraf
Of course, even without him getting socked by Chan, you could make the argument that the rising actor is already doing phenomenal. His new romantic comedy The Life List is currently the No. 1 movie on Netflix. In it, Allen plays Brad Ackerman, an estate lawyer tasked with making sure Alex (Sofia Carson) completes the tasks laid out for her by her late mother (Connie Britton). For every goal on her “life list” she achieves — perform stand-up comedy, get a tattoo, fall in love, etc. — she receives another video message from her mom recorded before she died. Allen doesn’t keep a life list of his own (save for the aforementioned punch), but at age 30, he’s already checked off more than most people.
Before he made it to Hollywood, Allen was an acrobat and a classically trained ballet dancer who studied at the elite Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington, D.C. But, like acting, ballet was never specifically a childhood dream for him.
“I didn’t even really like ballet at the time, but I loved the idea of moving away from home to like a Hogwarts for ballerinas,” he explains. “I just loved it because everyone was insane. All the kids, all the teachers — we were all just nuts, clearly didn’t fit in anywhere else, and I felt right at home.”
At first, he says, the physical challenges of ballet appealed to him. (“It was just blindingly difficult, which I loved,” he says. “I’m one of those dogs that you have to run two hours a day or they tear up your house.”) But the strict training can take its toll, and even reach a point where it feels impossible.
Jacket and vest Gucci, pants Simone Rocha
“I think at its worst, [ballet] is a blind pursuit of some kind of ineffable perfection,” he says. “At its best, it’s, I mean, fireworks. It’s beautiful, moving, life-changing expression and performance. And it’s like with anything with that sense of pure beauty, you’re always going to get this kind of ugly, super challenging, rigorous thing that can also do a lot of damage to the body and to the mind.”
Eventually, he came to the realization that a career as a ballet dancer wasn’t for him when he saw Taras Domitro and the San Francisco Ballet perform Romeo and Juliet at the Kennedy Center.
“I was like, oh man, I’d love to do this ballet,” he recalls. “Wait a minute, I really only want to do Taras Domitro’s part. And then I was like, wait, I just want to be Taras Domitro, and I’m not. And I was like, I’m not going to get his part because he’s a principal dancer in the San Francisco Ballet and I’m not a principal dancer in the San Francisco Ballet, and then I was like, wait, scrap all of that. They do this ballet probably like once every eight years, and I actually only want to be Mercutio. I realized I only wanted to be Taras Domitro as Mercutio in the San Francisco Ballet’s version of Romeo and Juliet.”
Eventually, Allen found himself in Los Angeles working as a street performer on Venice Beach and training to audition for Cirque du Soleil when a different audition — one for a Japanese Pepsi commercial — fell into his lap. Yes, an ad selling soda halfway around the world is how he caught the acting bug.
T-shirt Thom Sweeney, jacket Polo Ralph Lauren
“I just loved being on set,” he says. “So how do I get my ass on set more often? The answer ended up being acting. And then I learned about it as an art form and was able to study and train my butt off.”
Part of his self-prescribed schooling included watching interviews with legendary acting coach Larry Moss, who’s worked with everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Helen Hunt; and part of it meant unlearning much of his dance training in order to portray realistic humans onscreen.
Shirt Ferragamo, jacket and pants Todd Snyder
“I had to undo a lot of what I learned in ballet because [dancers] don’t have voices. We don’t speak,” he explains. “We don’t express in that way. We express in a very specific technique that’s designed for a stage format. There’s a really high pain threshold. You’re trained to withstand insane amounts of discomfort. And through that, my innate sensitivity kind of goes away. We see everything and we feel everything, but we don’t know how to do that in front of people.”
“You walk into the studio, at least in ballet, everything else goes out the window,” he says. “So resensitizing myself, it’s taken a long time to just have things affect me naturally.”
Shirt Versace, pants Emporio Armani, jacket Willy Chavarria, necklace John Hardy
Nowadays, that’s not an issue, and Allen has been fortunate enough to work with some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including Steven Spielberg (in 2021’s West Side Story) and Kenneth Branagh (in 2023’s A Haunting in Venice). You can see him next in an as-yet-untitled Kathryn Bigelow movie, the details of which he’s definitely not allowed to divulge. “I have so many NDAs,” he laughs. What he can say is that working with storied directors like Bigelow has been an experience full of “all those classic ‘pinch me’ moments.”
“The thing I’ve noticed about all of them is that there’s this moment, usually like 30 seconds after meeting them for the first time, where I just say to myself, ‘Duh.’ There’s something about the way they are,” he says. “Each of them operates with such integrity and they’re impossibly aligned with their vision. Their vision and their own authenticity are melded together. And the second that I met them, I was able to see that, and I think everyone around them sees that. So it’s really easy to help their vision come to life.”
Jacket and shoes Tod’s, shirt Dries Van Noten, pants Kiko Kostadinov
“Also, having seen a bunch of their movies prior, it makes sense. We speak the same language because I’m a fan.”
Between acrobatics, dance, acting and drawing — when he was a kid, he says, he “drew on every available surface” — Allen is a jack of all artistic trades. He and his childhood best friend Anders Ravenstad have been collaborating on a comic book called Fiberglass for the past eight years, and they just partnered with Dynamite Comics for an early 2026 release. And though he’s dabbled in so many different fields, what ties them all together ultimately is Allen’s bright-eyed passion. He’s a fan.
Sweater Polo Ralph Lauren, shirt Brunello Cucinelli, shorts Nanushka, socks Bugatchi
“I’ve been really lucky to have done a variety of projects and tones and genres and stuff like that,” he says. He does, however, hope to be able to use his athletic background in more physically demanding roles in the future.
“I would love to be in the action and adventure space,” he says. “I think there’s a lot of untapped physical art forms that can be applied to that that are not separate from storytelling, and I would love to see that. I just think there’s an opportunity there for a really interesting turn. So I would love to make those movies.”
And, of course, get punched by Jackie Chan.
Photographer: Matallana
Photography Assistant: Bennet Hense
Creative Direction & Fashion: Kevin Breen
Grooming: Sienree Du using Prada Beauty & Shu Uemura
Editor: Bonnie Stiernberg
Digital Cover
Thanks for reading InsideHook.
Sign up for our daily newsletter to get more stories just like this.
