Some actors spend years chasing one good role. Gabriel LaBelle landed two career-defining ones back to back, and both times, he was stepping into the shoes of a real, well-known person. If you've just discovered his name and want the full Gabriel LaBelle biography — who he is, what he's done, and where he's headed next — here's everything worth knowing.
Early Life and Background
Gabriel LaBelle was born in September 2002 in Vancouver, British Columbia. His mom, Megan LaBelle, works as a hair stylist, and his dad, Rob LaBelle, has spent years as a character actor and producer in Canadian film and TV. Growing up with a parent already inside the industry gave Gabriel an early, unglamorous look at how the business actually runs — not the red-carpet version, but the real grind of auditions and call sheets.
He was also raised Jewish, a detail that ended up mattering more than he probably expected once he auditioned for the role that would change his career.
His love of performing started early. Around age eight, he was doing musical theater at summer camp, taking on parts in Footloose, Shrek the Musical, and Aladdin. It sounds like a tidy origin story looking back, but at the time, it was just a kid who liked being on stage. If you enjoy reading about young performers who found their footing through theater rather than a single big break, our profile on Ella Bright follows a similar path and is worth a look.
Getting Started in Acting
His first real on-screen credit came in 2013, a guest spot on the Canadian show Motive. That one came through his dad's connections — Rob helped him land an agent and was also producing on the show. It's worth being honest about that: having a parent in the business doesn't make you talented, but it can absolutely get your foot in a door that would otherwise stay shut.
By 2017, he was leading the indie horror film Dead Shack, which played at the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Fantasia Film Festival. Even so, it wasn't until 2020 that he fully committed to acting as a career. He moved toward Montreal to apply for theatre programs, and then the pandemic hit and scrambled those plans. He ended up in Concordia University's drama program, though classes had already moved online by then. He'd also been thinking about a move to New York City, but decided to stay closer to home instead.
There's a pattern here that's easy to miss if you only look at the highlight reel. Gabriel didn't have a clean, straight road to where he is now. There were delays, dead ends, and quiet stretches — the kind of stretches that tell you whether someone actually wants this or just likes the idea of it. For another actor whose early years took a similarly winding route before things clicked, take a look at our piece on Rachel Marsh.
Somewhere in this period, he also made a call that seems almost backwards for a young actor trying to build a name for himself: he deleted his social media entirely. In his words, it made him a better actor because it kept him focused, creative, and confident instead of chasing likes online. In a business where visibility usually feels like currency, that's not a small decision to make.
Gabriel LaBelle in The Fabelmans: The Breakthrough
In March 2021, casting director Cindy Tolan reached out about an audition for a project with almost no details attached — no title, no character names, nothing hinting he was about to read for Steven Spielberg. He was one of roughly 2,000 actors considered for the lead role of Sammy Fabelman.
He didn't get it right away, either. The first audition went nowhere. Three months later, he got a callback — a virtual session with Spielberg, Tolan, and 38 other people watching on screen. That's when he landed the part.
To get ready, Gabriel went deep into Spielberg's work. He rewatched films like Empire of the Sun and studied old photographs, home movies, and family archives Spielberg shared with him. He also learned to operate the period-accurate 8mm and 16mm cameras used on set, which were loaded with real film, and picked up how to cut and splice film stock the old-fashioned way, on the editing machines and projectors people actually used back then. After the shoot wrapped, he kept the 8mm camera Sammy uses in the movie — the same one used for the family camping trip and the short film Escape to Nowhere.
This is the part worth sitting with for a second: he wasn't just acting in a film. He was playing a version of one of the most famous directors alive, in a movie that the same director was making behind the camera. That's a strange kind of pressure most actors never face, let alone as their first big role — and it's a big reason his work as the Sammy Fabelman actor got so much attention so fast.
The Fabelmans premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, and Gabriel's performance got noticed immediately. He was named a TIFF Rising Star, won Best Young Performer at the 28th Critics' Choice Awards, and picked up the Breakthrough Performance award from the National Board of Review.
The film itself split critics a bit more than his performance did. Ben Miller, writing in a debate for The Film Experience, felt it leaned too hard into Spielbergian Easter eggs and self-mythologizing. His co-debater, Eurocheese, pushed back, arguing the vignette structure and the film's sense of humor made it work — and that Gabriel was the glue holding the whole thing together. What made his performance land, in my view, wasn't just technical skill. It was his willingness to stay inside Sammy's limited, kid's-eye view of events, even in moments when the audience could clearly see more than Sammy could. That kind of restraint is hard to fake, and it's a big part of why a separate analysis pointed to the film's tight focus on Sammy's perspective as the thing that gave it real honesty.
Saturday Night and Beyond
After The Fabelmans, Gabriel relocated to Los Angeles and kept the work coming. He played the younger version of Julian Kaye — Jon Bernthal's character — in the Showtime series American Gigolo.
Then came his second big swing. In 2024, he was cast as SNL creator Lorne Michaels in Jason Reitman's Saturday Night, which tells the chaotic, behind-the-scenes story of the very first episode of Saturday Night Live. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2024, and his performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
Take a second to notice the pattern: his first big role was young Steven Spielberg, his second was Lorne Michaels. That's not a normal trajectory for a young actor. It says something about how directors and casting people see him — there's a groundedness to him, an ability to channel a real person without sliding into a caricature of them. It's also why anyone searching for Gabriel LaBelle movies worth watching usually lands on these two as the starting point.
That same year, he starred in Snack Shack, a coming-of-age comedy from Adam Carter Rehmeier that had been pushed back by the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes.
As of 2026, his newest project is Crash Land, a Canadian stunt comedy that premiered at SXSW. Gabriel plays Lance, one of three teenage friends filming Jackass-style stunts in rural Canada, who decide to make one last, ultimate stunt video after a friend dies mid-stunt — partly as a way of working through the grief. Early reviews liked what he brought to it, with one critic describing his character as a "little idiot caveman white-knuckling his way to maturity." It's a looser, funnier, more physical role than anything he's done before, and it hints at the range the prestige roles never really gave him room to show. If you're curious how other young actors have handled the jump from serious dramatic work into something rowdier, our profile on Kerris Dorsey is worth a read too.
He also recently wrapped Just Picture It, a Netflix rom-com opposite Millie Bobby Brown. The setup is a fun one — two college students whose phones start glitching and showing them photos from ten years in the future, where they're married with kids, except they haven't actually met yet. Lee Toland Krieger is directing, and it marks a real shift toward more commercial, crowd-pleasing work for Gabriel.
Net Worth and Career Outlook
Let's talk about Gabriel LaBelle's net worth, since that's usually the part people skip straight to. There's no verified public number for him as of mid-2026, and anything you see floating around online should be treated as a rough guess rather than fact.
Here's what's actually worth knowing instead: for a young actor, the first big prestige role rarely pays the most. Films like The Fabelmans typically pay scale or close to it, since indie and awards-season dramas usually run on much smaller budgets than blockbusters do. The real payoff tends to come later, once that kind of role raises an actor's profile enough that their asking price for future jobs goes up, and bigger productions start writing checks to match the attention. That's roughly where Gabriel seems to sit right now — past the unknown-actor stage, not yet at full A-lister rates, but clearly trending upward.
What's easier to track than a dollar figure is the trajectory itself. He's gone from an unknown Canadian actor to a Critics' Choice winner, a Golden Globe nominee, and someone headlining a Netflix feature opposite one of the biggest young stars working today — all before turning 24.
That kind of early attention raises the bar for what comes next, too. The question isn't really whether Gabriel LaBelle can act anymore; that part seems settled. It's whether he can build a career that stretches past playing real, recognizable people and into the kind of unpredictable, varied work that actually sustains someone for decades. Looking at the mix he's already chosen — indie horror, a Spielberg biopic, a Jackass-style comedy, a Netflix rom-com — it looks like he's already thinking about exactly that.
Frequently Asked Questions
How old is Gabriel LaBelle?
He was born in September 2002, which makes him 23 years old as of 2026.
What is Gabriel LaBelle best known for?
He's best known for playing young Sammy Fabelman in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (2022) and Lorne Michaels in Jason Reitman's Saturday Night (2024).
Has Gabriel LaBelle won any awards?
Yes. He won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer and the National Board of Review's Breakthrough Performance award, both for The Fabelmans, and picked up a Golden Globe nomination for Saturday Night.
Is Gabriel LaBelle related to Steven Spielberg?
No, they're not related at all. The confusion usually comes from the role itself — Gabriel played Sammy Fabelman, a character based on a young Spielberg, in a movie Spielberg directed about his own childhood. Playing someone on screen doesn't make you family, even when the resemblance in the story is intentional.
What is Gabriel LaBelle's next project?
He recently wrapped Just Picture It, a Netflix rom-com with Millie Bobby Brown, and he appeared in Crash Land, which premiered at SXSW 2026.
Where is Gabriel LaBelle from?
He was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
This article is for informational purposes and based on publicly available information. Net worth figures, where mentioned, are estimates and should not be treated as confirmed financial data.
