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"    Photo: Getty Images   With his piercing baby blues and chiseled features, it&amp;#039;s no surprise that Keegan Allen, who stars as Toby Cavanaugh on ABC Family&amp;#039;s hit show Pretty Little Liars, has established himself as the series&amp;#039; mysterious, lust-worthy heartthrob. In the show&amp;#039;s third season fall finale, Rosewood&amp;#039;s troubled bad boy was revealed to be one of the members of the villainous &amp;quot;A-Team&amp;quot;\u2014and when the series returns for its January 8 winter premiere, Toby will come face-to-face with all those he has betrayed, including his girlfriend Spencer, played by Troian Bellisario. But aside from a shared affinity for motorcycles, the bubbly, personable Allen couldn&amp;#039;t be more different than his conflicted character. Here, ELLE.com chats with the up-and-coming actor about his Broadway aspirations, those pesky costar dating rumors, and what we can expect from the second half of Pretty Little Liars&amp;#039;s third season.   Name: Keegan Allen Age: 25 Provence: Los Angeles, CA Relationship Status: Presumably single On playing Pretty Little Liars&amp;#039;s resident bad boy: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s fun to play the villain. He&amp;#039;s very meticulous, thought-out, and organized, even more so than I am\u2014granted, sometimes that comes off as &amp;#039;Toby stares angrily into the camera&amp;#039;\u2014but it&amp;#039;s fun to play that up. What&amp;#039;s even more exciting is that I get to play flip sides of the spectrum, going from being the moral compass boyfriend to the ultimate betrayer.&amp;quot; On what will happen now that Toby has been outed as a member of the &amp;quot;A-Team&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;I found out early on that this would happen, and it was a shock. Marlene King, the show&amp;#039;s creator, actually came to me and asked if I would be comfortable dismantling the image of Toby. I said, &amp;#039;I don&amp;#039;t actually think it would dismantle him. It would add a whole new layer to him and the show!&amp;#039; I just hope that the fans get to see why this happened, how he got there, and what will happen to his relationship with the girls in the second half of the season.&amp;quot; On the rumors that he was dating costar Ashley Benson: &amp;quot;Whenever single people hang out, for some reason, everyone is like, &amp;#039;Oh my god. They&amp;#039;re dating.&amp;#039; No, we hang out all the time because we get off work and no one else is around, so we&amp;#039;re like, &amp;#039;Do you want to hang out?&amp;#039; I joke around with Lucy [Hale] all the time too\u2014in person and on Twitter\u2014and it&amp;#039;s been perceived that something is going on. But it&amp;#039;s not. I look at these girls like my sisters. I&amp;#039;m not dating any of them.&amp;quot; On finding out the show had been picked up for a fourth season via Twitter: &amp;quot;Twitter is pretty incredible. I found out before our producers found out about it. An entertainment website posted it and then all of the fans were like, &amp;#039;Season four pickup! Yay!&amp;#039; I was like, &amp;#039;Sweet!&amp;#039; I&amp;#039;m just excited to have been part of the journey during the first three seasons\u2014but where the show will go in its fourth season, I have no idea yet.&amp;quot; On going the extra mile to stay in touch with fans: &amp;quot;Originally, my character was only supposed to have a six-episode arc and was supposed to die in &amp;#039;The Homecoming Hangover&amp;#039; episode, but the fans rose up and told the writers that they didn&amp;#039;t want Toby to die. I&amp;#039;m always the one who will stay and talk with people and connect with them. I personally call one of my fans every month. I answer all of my own fan mail. I feel like if they are taking the time to watch the show and get involved, I want to take the time to say thank you.&amp;quot; On his dream Broadway role: &amp;quot;As an actor, to go and see those shows\u2014great plays like Who&amp;#039;s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Clifford Odets&amp;#039;s Golden Boy\u2014it&amp;#039;s so exhilarating. I&amp;#039;d personally love to perform the role of Jerry in Edward Albee&amp;#039;s The Zoo Story. He&amp;#039;s a transient, lost soul, and an example of humanity at its rawest.&amp;quot; On his cameo role in Gia Coppola&amp;#039;s new film Palo Alto, based on the book Palo Alto: Stories, written by James Franco: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m friends with the director, so it wasn&amp;#039;t scary at all, but it was a lot more intimate. I really love the script, and it had a similar feeling as going to work on Pretty Little Liars, because I really love how our show is written as well. It&amp;#039;s a really different character than Toby\u2014in fact, I wouldn&amp;#039;t recommend that anyone who gets easily offended watch my part [Laughs]. But it was fun!&amp;quot; Pretty Little Liars will return on January 8 at 8 p.m. EST on ABC Family. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/news/a18672/keegan-allen-interview/>