The Artful Dodger and Netflix’s new Little House On The Prairie remake: Luke Bracey is one busy man

Luke Bracey began his career much like every other aspiring Aussie actor: he booked a role on Home And Away.

It was 2009, and Bracey, then 19, wasn’t looking to pursue acting as a career, falling into the role as ne’er-do-well teen Trey Palmer almost by accident — he had no idea all these years later that he would still be doing it.

And doing it pretty darn well.

“I’d have to have had pretty deluded dreams of grandeur to think that is where my life was headed,” says Bracey, who is speaking with STM over the phone from Prague, where he is filming an as-yet-unannounced project.

“But I was very fortunate in that I got off to a pretty good start.

“After I did Home And Away, I completely fell into acting — it wasn’t something I ever thought about doing in my life — and I found I’d wound up in this job that I love, and that interests me, and entertains, and inspires me continually.

“Who gets that? That’s like winning the lottery in life for me.”

Aussie-born Bracey has had a truly international career. There have been roles alongside Selena Gomez in the 2011 film Monte Carlo – “I got sent to Budapest and Paris and Monte Carlo when I was 20 and was like, ‘this movie stuff is kind of fun!” — a stint playing Cobra Commander in G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) and then his big breakthrough came in 2015 when he was cast to play Johnny Utah in the remake of cult surfing film, Point Break.

Roles followed in Hacksaw Ridge (2016), the Netflix romantic comedy Holidate and Baz Luhrman’s Elvis (2022) — he even found time to make it over to our neck of the woods, starring alongside Bryan Brown and Susie Porter in last year’s well-received The Travellers, shot in WA’s South West.

It was while on a brief trip east at the end of 2024 that he scored his latest role, in Disney’s The Artful Dodger, playing stitched-up lawman Inspector Henry Boxer, a new face in Port Victory who has Dodger (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) in his sights.

“I was home for summertime and my best mate got married, then a couple of weeks after that, I got a call saying ‘Hey, would you like to come on board with this?’” he explains.

“I looked at the project and everyone onboard, and found it was going to be filmed in Sydney, which is where I am from, and I was like, ‘you don’t have to ask me twice to work in Australia, spend time with my family and friends and work on this great project’.”

The Artful Dodger, a “period-heist” drama that serves as something of a sequel to Charles Dickens’ classic novel Oliver Twist sees Fagan (David Thewlis) and Jack Dawkins, aka The Artful Dodger (Brodie-Sangster) transported to Sydney, where Jack has managed to remake himself as a promising surgeon.

Bracey’s character Boxer is a much more rigid, stitched-up character, something the actor relished for the change-of-pace it provided.

“That’s one of the things (that attracted me): it’s a very different role,” he explains.

“I am always looking to try and do things I haven’t done, and it’s always sufficiently terrifying — but that is where the fun is.

“On a selfish, personal level, I had never done a deep, period piece like this before, and that really excited me.

“I had never done a British accent before either, and never played this type of character.

“He is really stoic, and I really enjoyed that ‘Mr Darcy, Sherlock Holmes’ aspect of him.”

After wrapping Dodger, Bracey stayed in familiar territory, taking on another period piece, moving from 1850s Sydney to the 19th-century American West to take on the iconic role of Charles “Pa” Ingalls in the TV remake of Little House On The Prairie, a role first immortalised on the small screen by Michael Landon.

Big shoes to fill.

“It was pretty incredible,” he says of his time shooting in the wilds of Winnipeg for several months last year.

“I didn’t grow up with Little House . . . and I think for me, I was quite lucky not having any preconceived notions of (the book).

“I had heard the title, and had a basic idea, but over the course of getting the job and filming it, the range of people I have since met that have told me how much it means to them!

“Every spectrum and demographic of society have told me it’s their favourite thing, and that really was quite amazing.

“For me, I was quite lucky not having any preconceived notions of it; I was somewhat freed by it.

“I got to do my thing, and I was really lucky with that actually. I didn’t feel the weight of it all, I just felt the lovely privilege of it — of making a lovely, nice story, and of playing this really good man.”

That series is slated for release later this year, and in the mean time Bracey is in Prague — he can’t yet reveal to us what he’s doing there when we speak to him by phone, but he does confess to having a marvellous time.

“I am here, living out my dreams of the INXS film clip Never Tear Us Apart,” he laughs.

“I’m walking around in a big coat, going to cafes in this beautiful city I’ve always wanted to come to.”

He’s well and truly counting his blessings.

“It’s one of the best bits of my job, I get to go to beautiful places and experience things that you wouldn’t normally get to experience.

“I get to go to all these different places, work with awesome people, play different characters in different worlds — I got really lucky falling into this world, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

The Artful Dodger series two premieres Tuesday February 10 on Disney Plus.