Ethan Phillips

Ethan Phillips, born John Ethan Phillips on February 8, 1955, in Rockville Centre, New York, is an American actor whose career spans stage, film, and television. Raised on Long Island, he is the son of the owner of Frankie & Johnnie's, a steakhouse located on 45th Street and Eighth Avenue in New York City. Phillips earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Boston University and a Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University. He also plays the tenor saxophone.

Phillips launched his professional career in New York City's off-Broadway scene, earning the Best of the Actors' Festival award at the Direct Theater in 1977. Early stage work included the world premiere of Christopher Durang's The Nature and Purpose of the Universe at the Wonderhorse Theater and a revival of Eccentricities of a Nightingale at Playwrights Horizons, a production shaped in part by Tennessee Williams, who personally dictated a new monologue to Phillips to accommodate a costume change for leading lady Jill Eikenberry. In 1979–80, he appeared as Maurice Utrillo in the premiere of Dennis McIntyre's Modigliani, alongside Jeffrey DeMunn, at the Astor Place Theater, where the production ran for 208 performances.

Over the following years, Phillips accumulated an extensive range of stage credits in New York. He appeared in Terrence McNally's Lips Together, Teeth Apart at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and in a production of Measure for Measure with Kevin Kline at the Public Theater's Delacorte Theater. His Broadway debut came with the premiere of My Favorite Year at Lincoln Center, a production that also featured Andrea Martin and Tim Curry. He later appeared in the Broadway premiere of David Mamet's November at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, alongside Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf, and subsequently performed the play again with John Malkovich and Patti LuPone for Stars in the House. In 2012, he played the title character opposite Peter Dinklage in The Imaginary Invalid for Bard College's SummerScape Festival.

Phillips's Broadway credits, which span from 1992 to 2017, also include All the Way Home and the play November. During the 2013–14 season, he portrayed Stanley Levison in Robert Schenkkan's All the Way at the American Repertory Theater, a production that transferred to Broadway's Neil Simon Theater, where it won the Tony Award for Best Play and the Tony Award for Best Actor for Bryan Cranston. Most recently, he played Murray Lefkowitz in the Broadway premiere of Ayad Akhtar's Junk: The Golden Age of Debt at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater. Off-Broadway work for the Manhattan Theatre Club includes leading roles in the premieres of Dennis Kelly's Taking Care of Baby, Terrence McNally's Golden Age, and Sharyn Rothstein's By the Water. Phillips has also been active in regional theater, with credits at institutions including San Diego's Old Globe Theater, Seattle Repertory Theater, Baltimore's Centerstage, the Westport Country Playhouse, the Actors Theater of Louisville, and the McCarter Theatre, among others.

As a playwright, Phillips developed his play Penguin Blues through six summers as an actor at the Sundance Institute's Playwrights Conference in Utah. The play is published by Samuel French Inc. and was included in The Best Short Plays of 1989, edited by Ramon Delgado and published by Applause. Drawing on his Sundance experience, Phillips co-founded First Stage, a playwright development lab in Los Angeles.

On television, Phillips is best known for two long-running roles. He joined the cast of the ABC sitcom Benson in 1980, playing PR man Pete Downey for five seasons through 1986. In 1990, he entered the Star Trek universe as the Ferengi doctor Farek in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Ménage à Troi," and went on to portray the Talaxian character Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager from the series' premiere in 1995 through nearly its entire seven-season run, concluding in 2001. He also appeared as a holographic nightclub maître d' in the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact and as a Ferengi pirate captain in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Acquisition." Among his many other television appearances, Phillips played the recurring role of Keith in the final two seasons of Lena Dunham's Girls and portrayed Spike Martin in Armando Iannucci's HBO space comedy Avenue 5. Guest credits include Better Call Saul, Veep, The Good Wife, New Amsterdam, Criminal Minds, Law & Order, Arrested Development, and Boston Legal, among numerous others.

Phillips has appeared in more than 50 films, beginning with Miloš Forman's Ragtime. His film credits include Critters (1986) and Critters 3 (1991), Green Card, Lean on Me, The Man Without a Face, Bad Santa, The Island (2005), the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Woody Allen's Irrational Man (2015), and James DeMonaco's The Purge: Election Year. He has also contributed voice work to several Star Wars video games, including Star Wars: Force Commander (2000), Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds (2001), and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003). In 1999, Phillips co-authored The Star Trek Cookbook with William J. Birnes, published by Pocket Books.