Daily Inspiration: Meet Chase Lawless

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chase Lawless

Hi Chase, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Chase Lawless is an actor and fight choreographer from Alberta, Canada, who splits his time between Los Angeles, New York City, and Toronto, Canada. Lawless found his passion for the performing arts as a teenager, when he performed in a school production of Treasure Island. After obtaining a film degree from Red Deer College at age 22, Chase moved to Toronto to pursue a career in film and television. Recent film and television credits include Accused (FOX), Mayor of Kingstown (Paramount+), the award winning Canadian sitcom Letterkenny (Hulu/Crave), and the feature films The Apprentice (2022), and Bordello (2023). In 2023, Chase was a leading character in the vertical ReelShorts series titled Married at First Sight, which has received tens of millions of views on Youtube, Tik Tok, and the Reel Shorts platform. After his success on that project, he was offered two more contracts in the vertical short format, titled Cohabitating (2025) and Love Lies (2025), which are set to release later this year. Worth noting as well is Chase’s major critical role in the upcoming Amazon MGM true crime anthology series Justice on Trial, where he played the leading role of Christopher Hammer, one of the crime victims. In this role, Lawless also performed stunts, doubling both as an actor, and his own stunt double. This series is set to release later in 2025 as well. In 2022, Lawless also starred in two short films: TheBackhand, which has already won a slew of awards at festivals all over North America, and Hidden, a Hungarian Holocaust docu-drama which premiered at the end of 2024.

Lawless has also been training in stage/film combat and martial arts since 2012, and is an active member of The Art of Combat and Fight Directors Canada. Having trained internationally, Lawless has received advanced certifications within multiple organizations, including Fight Directors Canada, The Society of American Fight Directors, The Society of Australian Fight Directors Inc., The British Academy of Stage and Screen Combat, and The Nordic Stage Fight Society. Fight choreography credits include AN.X.O (TELUS Storyhive), The Backhand, Deadly Murder (Central Alberta Theatre), as well as Don Giovanni (Opera York). Chase currently trains regularly at Lesly Kahn and Co. in Los Angeles as an actor, with Weapon Experts Anthony De Longis in Japanese Swordsmanship, and with Stunt Coordinator Mario Perez as a fight
performer/ choreographer. The charity organization JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) remains close to his heart, as well as Mercy Corps, which is on the ground in Ukraine, Romania, and Poland, providing funding to local organizations and working to meet the most urgent humanitarian needs in that region.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road has been about as smooth as one might expect for a career in the arts. I have been extremely fortunate to have had the opportunities I have had this far; being a major part of network/ major streaming shows like Accused, Justice on Trial, and Mayor of Kingstown, all shows I would enjoy as a viewer anyway, regardless of having had worked on them, is a blessing. This career is tough, and I’ve had a lot of friends leave the business along the way. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, though a necessary part of this business, made it really difficult for a lot of my colleagues to find work. But hard times make for better stories, film makers, and performers. So there is some silver lining to be found in my eyes here, even through all the adversity artists are facing today.

And then there is being away from family and old friends. There is a lot of travel in this business, and though you make friends quickly through being on set and on stage, people eventually move on to other projects. It’s a bit of a paradox: you meet lots of people by working, but then when you move on to other projects, it feels like you have to start from scratch, more or less. It’s like if you were to change your school every semester in university.

The final thing that I find difficult in this business is how often I see artists compromising themselves for work they are not passionate about. People do commercials for money, even if they don’t believe in the product, perform in a series for a paycheck to feed their family… I’ve been fortunate enough to have enjoyed my body of work, but I see many others who feel a sense of discontent with their careers. It’s tough being an actor because you have limited creative control. Unless you are the lead and executive producer of your own series, you often need to just follow the script and have creativity within a limited box. This can be freeing as well, as it simplifies our work, but if you like to create your own work and really explore possibilities, it can be a difficult thing to negotiate with yourself.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
You can refer to my bio I supplied in the first page for a lot of this! But other things I would add:

I am both an actor and a fight choreographer, which people always take a second to process. “Wait… what do you do?” I perform fights on camera, and other stunts as well on occasion, but primarily fight sequences with weapons specifically. I have a martial arts background, and have done a lot of training in Stage Combat internationally. It is something I have worked at for a long time, and absolutely one of the skillsets I am the most proud of.

When it comes to acting, I often get called in for antagonistic and villain type roles. Whenever the chance to do so comes my way, I am more than happy to dive into those types of characters. Monsters are really easy to play flat and hollow, but I believe that the real life monsters in our world have a lot of depth to them; how did they get to where they are today, and what led them down that darker path? As such, I really pride myself on playing those types of characters, because I see so many opportunities to be creative. The leading man can often be very ridged to play, in that you must do what is on the page. Bad guys often offer more freedom for creative performers in my eyes. Think Rufus Sewell
in Man in the High Castle, or Tom Hiddleston as Loki, for example.

The final thing I will add is that the majority of my larger job opportunities these days are for Eastern European characters. My mom’s side of the family came from Ukraine, and my mother was born here in North America, but I still feel strongly tied to those roots. After Ukraine was invaded by Russia, I began to learn Ukrainian from a native teacher in Lviv as a form of support. So now, many of the roles I go out for have me speaking in an Eastern European accent, or in Ukrainian, Russian, and even Belarusian here and there. Though I am Canadian I think, like Americans, there is something value in remembering where our families came from, and I can’t think of a better way to honor that than to tie it into my artistry.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success is being ready to die at any given moment, and be at peace with that. An old martial arts teacher of mine taught me that when you are at peace with yourself, it makes you less afraid of death, and ironically, puts you in a position where you are most likely to survive a violent encounter, because your mind and heart are clear. Beyond marital arts, I believe this has real life applications.

We make mistakes as parents, make poor business decisions, have done things that make us ashamed, and often want more than what we have: more money, more followers, more acting gigs, more more more… That freedom to live our lives on our own terms, and to be happy with who you see in the mirror every day, regardless of how much money, career achievements, or renown you may or may not have, is a freedom unlike any other. In other words, the process is more important than the destination, and even if you never get to where you are headed, being happy with the path you are on is the greater success.

Pricing:

• I am priceless, but will work as a local LA hire.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chaselawless.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chase.lawless/ or @chase.lawless

Image Credits
1. Chase Lawless in his major critical role of Videla in Accused
2. BTS of Lawless with his costar Ian Anthony Dale on set of Accused
3. BTS of Chase Lawless on set of the upcoming Amazon MGM series Justice on Trial
4. Chase Lawless with his military stunt team on the set of the Paramount+ series Mayor of Kingstown
5. Chase Lawless at a Swat Tactics workshop at Rapier Wit school for stage and screen combat in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
6. Chase Lawless on set of the award winning short film The Backhand with his costar Catherine Valle Taylor
7. Chase Lawless performing fight choreography on a Viking Era feature film set to be released later in 2025.
8. Chase Lawless performing as Conrad, lead antagonist of the upcoming vertical series “Love Lies”.