Elijah Canlas
BIOGRAPHY
Elijah Luiz Madiclum Canlas (born August 16, 2000) is a Filipino actor who enters this catalogue as Cairo Lazaro, the shut-in gamer at the centre of Gameboys (2020), a series shot under quarantine restrictions and assembled largely out of video calls. It was later nominated in the Kids: Live-Action category at the 10th International Emmy Kids Awards, presented on 12 October 2021.
He had already been working for six years by then. His first screen credit was Sundalong Kanin (2014), a Cinemalaya entry in which he played Badong at fourteen, and he spent the rest of the decade in independent film: Sakaling Hindi Makarating and Gasping for Air in 2016, then a 2019 that produced four features at once, Kalel, 15, Edward, LSS and Babae at Baril.
The awards arrived in one concentrated run. For Kalel, 15 he won Best Actor at the 43rd Gawad Urian Awards and the 68th FAMAS Awards in 2020, and Best Actor at the 17th Asian Film Festival in Rome the same year. Edward brought him Best Supporting Actor at the 22nd Gawad Pasado Awards, and He Who Is Without Sin a Special Jury Prize for a lead performance at Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino. In 2021 he took Best Young Actor at the 7th Urduja Heritage Film Awards and Best Actor at the 16th Harlem International Film Festival. Later wins include Best Actor at the 6th EDDYS Awards for Blue Room in 2023 and a Platinum Stallion National Media Award for the series Senior High in 2024.
He stayed inside the Gameboys world well past its first season, playing Cairo again in the companion series Pearl Next Door (2020), in Gameboys: The Movie (2021) and in Gameboys 2 (2022). Everything else in his filmography is mainstream and unusually dense for a performer his age: About Us But Not About Us (2022), Keys to the Heart and the historical drama GomBurZa (both 2023), Sunshine and Uninvited (2024) and Salvageland (2025), with television running alongside in The Iron Heart, Senior High, High Street, FPJ’s Batang Quiapo and Incognito.
Where this record is thin: none of the work listed above other than Gameboys has a record on this site, so the filmography cannot be cross-linked from here. No official social account was verified for this page, and no height or similar figure is published, because no admissible source for either was read.
The awards came before the audience did.
By the time Gameboys put him in front of an international viewership in 2020, Canlas had already been named Best Actor by both the Gawad Urian critics and FAMAS for Kalel, 15. That is an unusual order of events for someone who is, in this catalogue, known for a lockdown web series.
It changes how the filmography should be read. Philippine independent cinema hands out recognition long before commercial visibility follows, and a Gawad Urian win is a professional credential that a streaming audience never sees. Canlas came to a genre series carrying that, which is close to the reverse of the route most performers filed here took.
One correction worth making plainly: the Emmy line on this page belongs to the programme, not to the performer. The International Emmy Kids Awards has no individual acting category, and the nomination was for Gameboys as a series.
PROFILE DETAILS
- Real Name
- Elijah Luiz Madiclum Canlas
- Pronouns
- he/him
- Born
- (Age 26)
- Birthplace
- Manila, Philippines
- Gender
- Male
- Profession
- Nationality
- Debut
- 2014 · Sundalong Kanin (2014) as Badong
- Agency / Label
- Cornerstone Entertainment; The IdeaFirst Company
- Years Active
- 2014-present
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