Graham Phillips

Graham Phillips is an American actor, singer, writer, and director born on April 14, 1993, in Orange County, California. Raised in the Laguna Beach area, he attended St. Margaret's Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano and was raised Episcopalian. His father, Layn R. Phillips, is an attorney and former U.S. district court judge. Phillips began his acting career at age nine and went on to build a career spanning stage, film, and television. In the fall of 2012, he enrolled at Princeton University, where he majored in history and wrote an undergraduate thesis on indigenous marginalization and resistance in the United States, graduating in 2017.

Phillips made his Broadway debut in 2008, playing Evan Goldman in the musical comedy 13 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. The production, directed by Jeremy Sams and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, featured music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Dan Elish and Robert Horn. It ran from October 5, 2008, to January 4, 2009. Before that engagement, Phillips had performed the title role in The Little Prince with the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center and appeared in the world premiere of An American Tragedy at the Metropolitan Opera, where he played Young Clyde, opening and closing the opera with a solo. Earlier stage work included the role of Tiny Tim opposite Jim Dale's Scrooge in A Christmas Carol: The Musical at Madison Square Garden, and a performance in The Ten Commandments: The Musical with Val Kilmer at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. At age ten, he became the second youngest person to sing the National Anthem before a Los Angeles Dodgers game. He also debuted original songs composed by Martin Charnin and John Kander in New York, appeared twice as a soloist on The Today Show, recorded a solo written by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz for the film Noel, and contributed as a soloist to Meat Loaf's 2006 album Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose.

His stage career continued well beyond Broadway. In 2022, Phillips played Nick in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Geffen Playhouse alongside Zachary Quinto and Calista Flockhart. He then took on the role of George in Sunday in the Park with George at Pasadena Playhouse in 2023, directed by Sarna Lapine, and reprised that role in a 2024 production at the Axelrod Performing Arts Center directed by Eamon Foley, his former 13 co-star and Princeton classmate. In June 2025, Phillips returned to New York in the Off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors, playing Seymour Krelborn.

On screen, Phillips is widely recognized for playing Zach Florrick on the CBS drama The Good Wife, a role for which he and the ensemble cast received three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. He played the lead in the television film Ben 10: Race Against Time, earning a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Performance by a Leading Young Actor in a TV Movie, Miniseries or Special. He also received a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Performance by a Supporting Young Actor in a Feature Film for his role as Jordan Baxter in Evan Almighty, which premiered June 22, 2007, and starred Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, and Lauren Graham. Additional film credits include Stolen Lives with Josh Lucas, Blockers alongside Kathryn Newton, XOXO, and Staten Island Summer. His television work includes recurring roles as Nick St. Clair in the second season of Riverdale and Nate in Atypical, as well as appearances in Crossing Jordan, Judging Amy, The King of Queens, and White Collar. In 2019, he played Prince Eric in ABC's The Little Mermaid Live. In 2023, he provided the voice and motion capture for Harry Osborn in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, replacing Scott Porter, who had voiced the character in the original Marvel's Spider-Man. Phillips is also set to appear as Matt Petersen in the Amazon series Scarpetta alongside Nicole Kidman.

Phillips has pursued directing and production alongside his performance work. In 2014, he co-founded the production company Grind Arts Co. with choreographer and actor Eamon Foley, through which he produced and acted in experimental adaptations of Sweeney Todd and The Last Five Years, directed a short film titled Color + Light, and directed a Princeton production of the musical Once in 2016. That same year, he and his brother Parker Phillips established the independent film production studio Phillips Pictures. Working together as Graham & Parker Phillips, the brothers released the short film The Mediator in 2015 before making their feature directorial debut with the neowestern The Bygone in 2019, distributed by Netflix. Their follow-up, Rumble Through the Dark, adapted by Michael Farris Smith from his novel The Fighter and starring Aaron Eckhart, Bella Thorne, and Academy Award nominee Marianne Jean-Baptiste, was released theatrically by Lionsgate on November 10, 2023, with international distribution handled by Universal Pictures.