This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter + Sportico September 2026 Sports issue. Click here to read more.
“I’m not a hockey player, but I play one on TV,” could be the calling card for several of today’s hottest young actors. Belmont Cameli, the 28-year-old star of Prime Video’s Off Campus, falls into that group—but more impressive is how quickly he’s distinguished himself within it. Ask any Hollywood casting director to name the top up-and-coming talents, and Cameli will almost certainly be near the top of that list.
Still, playing a sexy hockey player on TV and being an actual player in the NHL are very different jobs, performed by very different types of guys. That’s what we assumed, anyway, when we brought together Cameli and Macklin Celebrini, the San Jose Sharks’ wunderkind center, for THR‘s Game Recognize Game video series. As their conversation reveals, the pair have a lot more in common than we could have expected.
Photos by Amanda Pratt for The Hollywood Reporter
Of course, we did know that both are in the midst of meteoric rises. Off Campus is hardly Cameli’s first project—the Chicago-area native has worked alongside Robert De Niro and was a series regular on the Saved by the Bell reboot—but his role as college hockey star Garrett Graham has completely changed his career trajectory. He’s currently shooting the show’s second season in Vancouver.
