Chace Crawford

Chace Crawford played a rich boy in Gossip Girl and then a monstrous superhero in The Boys, which is the same casting twice: the handsome one you are not supposed to trust.

He was born at Lubbock on 18 July 1985 with the Sun conjunct Mars eleven minutes of arc apart, both at the end of Cancer. That is identity and aggression fused with no gap between them, in the sign that builds a self around belonging to something and defends it faster than the threat warrants. Sun conjunct Mars is usually described as courage; in Cancer it is closer to a reflex, and it is the most useful thing a performer could have for playing men whose charm is a layer over something else.

Four of the ten planets are in water against a single one in earth, so there is a great deal of feeling and very little that steadies it. Mercury squares Saturn by under half a degree, which is speech meeting doubt, a mind that treats its own uncertainty as evidence of stupidity when it is usually evidence of care. In an actor that aspect often shows up as a long apprenticeship: the talent is not the problem, the saying so is.

Venus faces Uranus across the chart within a degree, which is closeness against freedom, attraction that arrives and leaves at speed, and a tendency to unsettle something stable because it had gone predictable. Four slow planets are retrograde, which turns the chart inward and keeps most of this off the record.

What has survived two decades of being cast for a face is the Sun and Mars. A career that began on a teen drama and arrived at a part that is genuinely frightening is that conjunction finally being handed something real to do. Fifteen years between the two is the Mercury and Saturn half of the chart taking its time.