27-year-old actor Daren Kagasoff’s list of credits might be brief, but it is a true testament to this young leading man’s considerable ability to get noticed that with only a handful of projects, he has already commanded our attention and generated a considerable fan base. Sure, looks have something to do with it as well (he is another beautiful young man who can be likened to a young Ben Affleck), but it’s Daren’s talent and natural sense of himself that will help him stay ahead of the pack in Hollywood for years to come.

We first met and fell in love with Daren as Ricky Underwood on The Secret Life of the American Teenager, right alongside Shailene Woodley’s Amy Juergens. It’s sheer destiny that these two actors got their start together; they shared a remarkable chemistry on SLOTAM, and our only hope is to see them reunited in an even more high profile project sometime in the future. Ricky was a well-meaning, conflicted, sensitive and troubled teen who became a man before our eyes on the show, which enjoyed a healthy 5-year run.

Like many TV actors, Daren has also had to deal with the ups and downs of a highly volatile, unexpected industry—you’re on a hit show one moment, and a canceled one the next. This is exactly what happened to him post-Secret Life, when FOX failed to pick up the small screen adaptation of Lauren Oliver’s Delirium. Portraying Alex Sheathes, he was cast opposite YA heavyweights Emma Roberts and Gregg Sulkin in the pilot. The show seemed to have a lot of steam and buzz, with Lauren Oliver’s readers chomping at the bit to get a peek. In the end, though, Delirium was aired as a stand-alone TV movie on Hulu last summer. It’s been left to fan interest to see whether this series somehow gets resuscitated; and with YA dystopian fiction being all the rage these days (hello Hunger Games, The Maze Runner!), we can only hope this project may again see the light of day.

But Mr. Kagasoff isn’t looking back. In fact, he’s headed straight into a bright future, with appearances in two highly visible projects this month. First, there is the creep-fest Ouija, a horror movie perfectly timed for Halloween, in which we imagine Daren will meet a horrible fate (attractive young men never do very well in terms of horror movie survival statistics). He stars in the film opposite Bates Motel’s Olivia Cooke and The Fosters’ Bianca Santos. Additionally, he will guest star on FOX’s Red Band Society, playing a caustic, rebellious intellectual battling a life-threatening illness. Red Band Society takes an inside look at the lives of a group of terminally ill young adults in a hospital, and we had the chance to chat with the core cast here.

With his selection of varied and challenging roles, it’s fairly certain that we are only going to see more of Daren Kagasoff in the near future, as he begins to pull more weight and grows into the leading man he is destined to become. We, for one, cannot wait!

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