After leaving high school in Boca Raton, Lankenau moved to New York and joined with the growing creative community centered in Williamsburg, Brooklyn working as a DJ and writing occasionally for Vice magazine.
Lankenau and co-star Erin Fisher wrote much of their own dialogue for the movie and according to director Katz: "I had a full 120-page script, but when it came time to shoot it, everything was in the actors' own words.
[3] Lankenau worked with Katz again as the lead in his 2010 mystery, Cold Weather playing Doug, the aimless, Sherlock Holmes obsessed brother to Trieste Kelly Dunn’s character Gail.
As with Quiet City, director Katz encouraged the two leads to improvise dialogue and even went so far as to arrange “brother and sister dates” for the actors so they could bond and develop a more natural and authentic sibling relationship on screen.
[4] The film received positive reviews[5] and of Lankenau and co-star Raúl Castillo, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert wrote: “Cris Lankenau and Raúl Castillo as Doug and Carlos do a very difficult thing here, which is to play young male friends without the slightest shadow of Buddy Movie Syndrome.”[6] He has most recently starred in two short films: Benny to Benny and Toothbrush.