“1923”’s Brandon Sklenar Opens Up About His Road to Leading Man: 'Been Pounding Away for the Last 16 Years' (Exclusive)

• Brandon Sklenar, who played Spencer Dutton on the Paramount+ series 1923 and also appeared in It Ends With Us, stars in the new thriller Drop

• The New Jersey native opens up to PEOPLE about "pounding away" at his career for the past 16 years

• Next up, he appears in The Housemaid with Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney — after enjoying some much-deserved rest

Brandon Sklenar learned early on that hard work can lead to rewards.

“I come from a lineage of blue-collar workers, and I grew up on a job site, so I started swinging a hammer when I was 10 years old,” says the New Jersey native, 34, whose dad worked in construction.

“That just breeds a certain type of thing,” he continues to PEOPLE. “You do your best, and hopefully good things happen.”

He’s proof of that principle. At 19, Sklenar threw his belongings into garbage bags and drove cross-country to pursue a career in Hollywood, eventually landing small roles on TV series (New Girl) and in indie films (Mapplethorpe).

He got his big break with 1923, the hit Yellowstone prequel which premiered on Paramount+ in late 2022. The ruggedly handsome 6'2" Sklenar shot to fame as Spencer Dutton, a dashing World War I veteran and game hunter. The show, he says, “changed my life.”

Related: Brandon Sklenar Feels Like a 'Different Man' Going into 1923 Season 2, Had 'Way More' Pressure in Season 1 (Exclusive)

1923 wrapped up its two-season run with a heartbreaking finale on April 6, just five days before his new movie thriller Drop — starring Sklenar and The White Lotus alum Meghann Fahy — hits theaters.

In the film, he plays a photographer out of a first date with a single mom (Fahy), who keeps getting mysterious air-dropped messages to her phone. The anonymous sender becomes threatening, and ultimately demands that she kill her handsome companion.

“It is very cool objectively that these things are happening at the same time,” he says of 1923 ending while Drop debuts. “It’s sort of divine timing, a universal wink. It’s like, ‘Hey, good on you.’”

“I've been kind of just pounding away for the last 16 years,” he adds. “It's like the universe throwing you a bone and I really appreciate that.”

And though he’s grateful for everything that’s happening, Sklenar isn’t one to get “excitable,” he says:  “Even when I was a kid on Christmas, I was just like, ‘Oh, it’s Christmas.’”

As a boy, Sklenar wasn’t hoping for fame — he found that acting helped him deal with his stutter as well as his depression.

“My happiest moments were when I was playing and I got to disappear into these things,” says Sklenar, who was raised in a “blue collar" family by dad Bruce Feakins and mom Francine, a former hairdresser.

After high school, he decided to follow his dream and pursue acting. “It was like a burning desire and there was nothing else that I could do. I had to do it. And yeah, the drive was tremendous to do that,” he says.

Related: Meghann Fahy Fights to Survive a Nightmare First Date in Pulse-Pounding New Drop Trailer (Exclusive)

The gamble has obviously paid off. In addition to starring in1923, Sklenar had a supporting role in the 2024 adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel It Ends With Us.

And next up, he stars in the psychological thriller The Housemaid, costarring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, due out at the end of the year.

But first, he's hoping for some rest. After working nearly nonstop for the past 12 months, he’s looking forward to some downtime with his girlfriend of five years, personal trainer and nutritionist Courtney Salviolo, 34, and Remy, his 13-year-old mini Aussie, in Santa Barbara, where he lives.

“I like to sit with my dog and my girl and play the guitar,” he says.

Drop is in theaters nationwide on Friday, April 11.

For more on Brandon Sklenar, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE.

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