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There's a revealing instance in Lukas Gage's new book where he calls it a "early celebrity memoir". It's a humble joke, of course, but it's also accurate. Gage isn't extremely well-known – at least not yet. Chances are, though, if you've watched him then you will remember him. In 2020, he became an internet sensation after sharing an audition video where the director – forgetting he wasn't on mute – was heard criticizing his apartment. "These individuals live in these tiny apartments," he says, before Gage intervenes to let him know he can listen to every word. The following year, Gage starred in the debut installment of The White Lotus: in one moment, his character Dillon is caught by a hotel guest standing stark naked in the office, while the manager engages in anilingus on him.

"I thought: I don't have too much to do in the show so I'd better put my mark on it big," he says with a grin today. "I aimed to give people something to recall me for – and I did!"

Chaotic Roles and Existence

Gage excels in roles whose lives are messy and disordered – just like his own. That existence is all laid on the line in his autobiography, which – here comes another modest joke – is titled I Wrote this Book for Attention. Although humorously engaging, its subject matter is anything but simple. We begin with Gage's feelings of rejection by his father, then move on to drug use, molestation, family dysfunction, dependency, personality disorders, shame, unstable relationships and emotional pain. What we aren't shown all that much of is the glitz of fame. Gage freely admits he is at the start of his career. He has no great reserves of wisdom to share on achievement. So what was the reason of penning a memoir?

"I believe it's therapeutic for me to tell my story," he says over a video link from New York. "Throughout the entertainment industry strike I had the free time to really dig in and go deep, so I just said: why not."

Early Years and Approval

Gage, 30, grew up in San Diego, and from an early age he was aware of his persistent need for validation. He recalls a gathering where he appeared, aged four, wearing heels and costume accessories; in especial, he recalls being hurt by his dad's obvious distaste at what he was doing. Their bond never really recovered – Gage's dad left and became progressively remote with his sons (Gage has two siblings) before starting with a new family.

Gage struggled to fit in at school. He was a born actor, but this meant it was often challenging to know who the real Lukas was. "I was constantly trying on different personas and identities, which I think was quite polarising for people," he states. It also had its advantages. Gage could easily adopt the persona of a clean-living football player while privately stocking his bag up with booze at the rear of the local store. He was sometimes compensated by classmates to call up and pretend to be their parents to get them out of class. "Becoming different people was natural to me," he says.

Addiction and Household Challenges

The book deals with addiction – mainly his sibling's struggles with heroin that transform the admired brother he looked up to into a frail zombie, but also his mother's fixation with casino slot machines. An initial jackpot meant the family could manage to make the deposit on a bigger house, but Gage chuckles when I ask if she really profited from betting. "In the end, how much she spent was definitely a lot more than that."

It is amusing, he says. Until she had read the book, his mum hadn't really come to terms with this aspect of her personality. "She talked to my other brothers, like, 'Do you guys feel this way too?' And they were all like, 'Of course, we've been saying this since we were kids.'"

Gage has a lot of love for his mum, who clearly raised her children up in difficult circumstances. But she had a difficulty reading it. "She believed as if she was unsuccessful as a mother and I did not want her to feel that way at all. I feel like even though there's these turbulent things that occurred to me, hard things, I actually loved the way that I was raised."

Finding Self and Trauma

Gage didn't begin to find his true self until he was sent to an performance program as a child, where being boisterous, flamboyant and expressive was actually encouraged. The experience was life-changing in positive ways, but also in a awful one. One night, he was joined in his tent by a instructor who told Gage and a girl camper to kiss, remove their clothes and press their selves against each other while he pleasured himself. For a long time afterwards, he tried to ignore the guilt it left him with.

"Like a lot of people who experience being molested, I felt like there was a complicity on my part because my body just checked out. I knew it was inappropriate. I knew that the circumstance should not be taking place. But I just endured it."

Self-Criticism and Career Path

Gage is hard on himself in the book – and continues to be. He confesses to searching out "harsh critiques" of himself on the internet. "I dislike that I don't always hold my acting and work in the highest esteem," he says. "I desire I could have more compassion with that part of myself."

Yet he acknowledges that this doubt motivates him forward too. In high school, he appeared in a wart-removal commercial and spent the day on set asking every query possible about mic positioning and the role of crew. Despite his mum's reservations, he departed San Diego for Hollywood at the age of 18, staying in the Alta Cienega Motel where his hero Jim Morrison stayed, on and off, between 1968 and 1970 (online comments – "Stay FAR FAR AWAY from this DUMP!" – suggest it might not have been the most luxurious of accommodations).

Gage's big break should have arrived when he secured a part in Mad Men, as Sally Draper's love interest. He told his entire household about it, but during a costume fitting he was forced to show the tattoos he'd had inked on his sides, back and calf. "I had these agents saying to me: how could you ruin this? How could you mess this up? I don't think that was the best thing for a teenager to hear when they've just missed out on something that big."

These days, such tattoos would be concealed in minutes, but at that time he was shown the door and back to square one. The relentless cycles of auditions and refusals were harsh, but at least he had been trained well for them. "If I ever got turned down for a job, I would always feel: it's fine, it's not as bad as my dad rejecting me for another household and child," he says.

Persistence and Success

Gage persevered. The tale of how he deceived, pleaded and cheated to get an audition for Assassination Nation, which eventually resulted in a role in the hit show Euphoria (as Tyler Clarkson, black-eyed and in a support) and then The White Lotus, could take up a book in itself. Gage remembers the oddity of shooting The White Lotus in 2020, holed up in a luxury Hawaii hotel while the pandemic and the US vote unfolded. It was in fact Gage, along with co-star Murray Bartlett, who pitched the idea that their sex act should be something a bit extra – and creator Mike White readily approved. Gage chuckles recalling his mum's response. "She wrote me a message, like, 'Such a cute bum, but maybe next time give me a warning that's going to occur when I'm viewing with my companions.'"

It was while on set that Gage showed fellow cast members the audition video in which his apartment was criticized. Their reaction – shocked, amused, supportive – persuaded him to share it online. He wasn't ready for the reaction it received: numerous articles, outpourings of support from fellow actors and strangers alike, and a crusade against the director in question, none of which Gage had any say over. "I felt like people were much more angry about it than I was, which confused me," he {