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Philip Ettinger

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Philip Ettinger
Ettinger at the Berlin Film Festival 2023
Born (1985-09-08) September 8, 1985 (age 39)
Fair Lawn, New Jersey, U.S.
OccupationActor
Years active2008–present

Philip Ettinger (born September 8, 1985) is an American actor. He first gained attention for his supporting role as the troubled environmental activist, Michael, in Paul Schrader's First Reformed (2017). Other significant roles have been as Garrett Drimmer in the CBS All Access series One Dollar (2018), as the young-adult version of Mark Ruffalo's twin characters, Dominick and Thomas Birdsey, in HBO's I Know This Much is True in 2020, and in the lead role of Cole Freeman in Braden King's cinematic adaptation of the Carter Sickels' novel The Evening Hour (2020).

Early life

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Philip Ettinger was born September 8, 1985[1] to a Jewish family in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.[2][3] He attended Fair Lawn High School, where he was a member of the Masques drama club. He began studying film directing at Emerson College, Boston, Massachusetts.[2] After unexpectedly winning the lead role in a play his freshman year, however, he enrolled in a summer acting program at William Esper Studio, New York City, where a teacher encouraged Ettinger to transfer to the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.[2][4] This course included spending a year in England studying at the Globe Theatre in London.[2] He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.[4]

Career

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Ettinger's professional career began in 2008 in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

In 2014, Ettinger was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play, for his work in Joshua Harmon's Bad Jews. (The awards are to recognize excellence in New York Off-Broadway Theatre).[5] Ettinger starred alongside Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried in the supporting role of Michael, the troubled husband of Seyfried's character, Mary, in Paul Schrader's film First Reformed, which was premiered at the 2017 Toronto Film Festival.[4] The performance was a breakthrough for the actor; so much so, that the LA Times film critic, Justin Chang stated in an article regarding his personal choices for what should land on the 2018 Oscar nomination ballot, "When lead performances sneak into the wrong categories, it makes it all the harder for an organization to recognize a genuinely supporting turn — like, for example, Ettinger's galvanizing work in First Reformed, which lasts all of one scene and continues to stay with me.."[6] Ettinger continued to make strides in 2018, starring as Garrett Drimmer, a young steel mill worker raising a toddler on his own, in the CBS All Access ensemble series One Dollar, and appearing in the Sebastián Silva-directed film Tyrel, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.[4]

Ettinger at the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam

In 2020, Ettinger landed the role of playing the 17–19-year-old versions of Mark Ruffalo's twin characters, Dominick Birdsey and his paranoid schizophrenic twin, Thomas, in HBO's I Know This Much is True. This brought him considerable critical notice, with Dan Seddon of NME noting, "Actor Philip Ettinger (among the series' supporting players) makes a case for himself too, whose stint as the college-aged twins during flashbacks is a raw and fascinating portrayal of the Birdseys complicated youth."[7] Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson examined Ettinger and star Mark Ruffalo's collaboration on the twins with favor, "The relationship between Dom and Thomas is drawn with aching clarity, one brother trying to be good to the other while resentments build up around them. Crucially, neither Ruffalo nor Ettinger overplay Thomas's condition. Though he is volatile, and frustrating, and wounded, there is nothing childlike about him, really—at least not in the style of so many misbegotten depictions of mental illness on screen... In the other role, Ruffalo and Ettinger both keenly express Dom's agony over his assumed responsibilities and all they deny him in his own life. It's particularly heartbreaking to watch Ettinger's youthful appetite for escape dissipate as he realizes just how serious his brother's situation is, how much time and attention and patience it will require. I Know This Much Is True is wise enough to both regret and accept that onus, gradually allowing Dom to find the ragged purpose in a life he feels has been robbed of that very thing. Ruffalo communicates that hopeful resignation quite well, building on Ettinger's more wide-eyed performance to craft a man in full." Haaretz's Adrian Hennigan pointed out Ettinger's success in portraying both twins, "The actors (including Donnie and Rocco Masihi) playing the younger versions of the twins are also outstanding: Philip Ettinger subtly delineates how these identical twins are very different characters..."[3][8][9]

Earlier that year Philip Ettinger attended both the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands to promote his first lead role as Cole Freeman in Braden King's cinematic adaptation of the Carter Sickels novel The Evening Hour.[10][11][12] In it, Ettinger depicts a young nursing home aide struggling to support himself, and his grandparents, in economically depressed Appalachia, by buying excess pain meds from members of his West Virginian community, and reselling them to others in that same area. The film was released in 2021.[13] Future projects to be screened and/or filmed are Ian Barling's short film Safe,[14] which premiered at La Semaine de la Critique at Cannes in July 2021, the recently completed short Hold Up[15] by writer-director Alex Rollins Berg, and Little Brother,[16] an indie film written and directed by Sheridan O'Donnell. Ettinger also stars alongside Emmy-winner Martha Plimpton in Sardinia, a 2024 short film written and directed by Paul Kowalski and Executive Produced by Patton Oswalt.[17] The film is about a serious man trying to avoid catching a deadly laughing plague in a growingly polarized and dystopian society, and was named a 2025 Oscar contender for Best Live Action Short by Deadline.[18]

Filmography

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Film

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Year Title Role Notes
2010 Twelve Hunter McCulloch
2011 The Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best John John
2012 Compliance Kevin
2012 Sleepwalk with Me Doug
2013 The Maid's Room Brandon Crawford
2014 Chu and Blossom Donnie
2014 No Place Like Home Richard Short
2015 Anesthesia Roger
2016 Indignation Ron Foxman
2016 Last Call Alexi
2017 One Percent More Humid Billy
2017 The Pirates of Somalia Alex
2017 First Reformed Michael Mensana
2017 Brawl in Cell Block 99 Derrick
2017 November Criminals Mike Lorriner
2018 Tyrel Charles
2018 Holy Moses Justice Short
2019 The Undiscovered Country Richie
2020 The Evening Hour Cole Freeman
2020 Viena and the Fantomes Boyer
2021 Safe Danny Short
2022 Hold Up Graham Short
2022 Every Last Secret Cabbot
2023 Manodrome Jason
2023 Little Brother Pete
2023 Wildcat Cal Lowell
2024 My First Film Dustin
2024 Sardinia Ryszard Przybyszewski Short
TBA Josephine TBA Post-production[19]

Television

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Year Title Role Notes
2008 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Alec Bernardi Episode: "Babes"
2009 The Closer Jake Burrell Episode: "Maternal Instincts"
2010 Mercy Nathan Episode: "We're All Adults"
2011 Blue Bloods John John Episode: "Innocence"
2012 Girls Zach Episode: "The Return"
2013 The Good Wife Michael Episode: "A Precious Commodity"
2014 Manhattan Watts Episode: "Last Reasoning of Kings"
2016 Elementary Toby Dannon Episode: "Down Where the Dead Delight"
2017 The Mist Nash 2 episodes
2017 Chicago Med Eric Adams Episode: "Trust Your Gut"
2018 One Dollar Garrett Drimmer 10 episodes
2020 I Know This Much Is True Young Dominick and Thomas Birdsey 2 episodes
2021 Cinema Toast Man (voice) Episode: "Warehouse Friends"
2022 Angelyne Cory Hunt 3 episodes
2022 A Friend of the Family Joe Berchtold Miniseries
2023 Bupkis Evan

Theatre

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Year Title Role Venue Notes
2010 Edgewise Ruckus Walkerspace [20]
2012 Bad Jews Jonah Haber Black Box Theater [21]
2013 Bad Jews Jonah Haber Laura Pels Theatre [22]

Awards and nominations

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Year Award Category Nominated work Result Ref.
2015 Lucille Lortel Award Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play Bad Jews Nominated [5]
2023 Soho International Film Festival Best Acting Performance in a Leading Role – US Feature Little Brother Winner[23]

References

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  1. ^ "Birth Announcements". The Record (Hackensack, NJ). September 19, 1985.
  2. ^ a b c d "Philip Ettinger on the fun of getting caught in a family feud in the off-Broadway hit Bad Jews". broadway.com. October 17, 2013.
  3. ^ a b "Philip Ettinger's role on 'I Know This Much Is True' hits close to home". nypost.com. June 10, 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d Philip Ettinger – One Dollar Cast Member, 2020, archived from the original on February 2, 2020
  5. ^ a b "Lucille Lortel Award Records the complete list of 2014 nominees". theatermania.com. April 2, 2014.
  6. ^ "Oscar nominations: From 'Black Panther' to 'Zama,' our film critic picks his dream ballot". Los Angeles Times. January 12, 2019. Retrieved March 14, 2021.
  7. ^ "'I Know This Much Is True' review: Mark Ruffalo has never been better". NME. May 11, 2020. Retrieved March 15, 2021.
  8. ^ Lawson, Richard. "Mark Ruffalo Suffers Two Times the Tragedy in HBO's I Know This Much Is True". Vanity Fair. Retrieved March 15, 2021.
  9. ^ "I know this much is true: you need to watch this show on HBO". Haaretz. Retrieved March 15, 2021.
  10. ^ "IFFR Big Screen Tour". iffr.com. January 2020.
  11. ^ ""We Wanted It to be Natural, Believable": DP Declan Quinn on The Evening Hour". filmmakermagazine.com. February 3, 2020.
  12. ^ "the-evening-hour". www.sundance.org. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
  13. ^ "Coming Soon". Strand Releasing. Retrieved March 15, 2021.
  14. ^ Safe (Short 2021) – IMDb, retrieved August 17, 2021
  15. ^ Hold Up (Short 2022) – IMDb, retrieved August 17, 2021
  16. ^ Yuma, Jennifer (August 16, 2021). "Philip Ettinger, Daniel Diemer Starring in 'Little Brother' (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
  17. ^ "Sardinia". IMDb.
  18. ^ "EP Patton Oswalt Boards Oscar Contender Short 'Sardinia', Starring Martha Plimpton, Philip Ettinger". Deadline.
  19. ^ Erbland, Kate (July 10, 2024). "Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan Are Starring in 'Soft & Quiet' Filmmaker's Decade-in-the-Making Next Film". IndieWire. Retrieved August 4, 2024.
  20. ^ "Edgewise". Page 73. Retrieved March 12, 2021.
  21. ^ Stasio, Marilyn (October 31, 2012). "Bad Jews". Variety. Retrieved March 12, 2021.
  22. ^ Cox, Gordon (January 31, 2013). "'Bad Jews' back at Roundabout". Variety. Retrieved March 12, 2021.
  23. ^ NEPALES, JANET SUSAN R. (October 1, 2023). "'Asian Persuasion' wins audience award at SOHO International Film Fest". GMA News Online. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
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