Brian J. Smith

Brian J. Smith is an American actor born on October 12, 1981, in Allen, Texas. He trained at the Quad C Theatre program at Collin County Community College in Plano, Texas, where he also worked as a theatre technician and was cast as Alex in a production of A Clockwork Orange that received a positive notice from the Dallas Observer. Following a one-year apprenticeship at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, Smith relocated to New York City to pursue the four-year acting program at the Juilliard School Drama Division, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2007 as part of Group 36.

Smith made his Broadway debut in 2008, playing Turk in Come Back, Little Sheba. In April 2012, he joined the cast of The Columnist in the role of Andrei, a run that continued through July of that year. His most recognized stage work came between September 2013 and February 2014, when he portrayed Jim O'Connor, the Gentleman Caller, in the Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie at the Booth Theatre. That performance earned him nominations for both the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play, both in 2014.

Before his Tony-nominated turn, Smith had appeared in the independent films Hate Crime, Red Hook, and The War Boys, as well as a guest appearance on Law & Order in 2009. That same year, he was cast as Lieutenant Matthew Scott, a lead role in the military science fiction series Stargate Universe, which ran until its cancellation in 2010. In 2011, he recurred on the CW series Gossip Girl and starred in the Syfy film Red Faction: Origins. Additional television work during this period included the miniseries Coma and an appearance on Warehouse 13.

Smith became widely known to international audiences through his lead role as Will Gorski in the Netflix series Sense8, which ran from 2015 to 2018. In 2015, he also appeared in the pilot episode of Quantico. He subsequently took on main roles in Treadstone, a series spun off from the Bourne film franchise, and the BBC World War II miniseries World on Fire, both in 2019. In 2021, he appeared as Berg in The Matrix Resurrections, and in 2023 he was cast as Daniel Lennix in the FX on Hulu series Class of '09 and as Ken in the Canadian television drama Essex County.

Smith expanded his work behind the camera with A House Is Not a Disco, a documentary he directed that premiered at the SXSW festival in 2024. On November 7, 2019, he came out as gay in an interview with Attitude magazine.