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).
Contents
Early life
Philip Ettinger was born September 8, 1985 to a Jewish family in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. He attended Fair Lawn High School, where he was a member of the Masques drama club. He began studying film directing at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. After unexpectedly winning the lead role in a play his freshman year, however, he enrolled in a summer acting program at William Esper Studio in 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. This course included spending a year in England studying at the Globe Theatre in London. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Career
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). 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. The performance was a breakthrough for the actor; so much so, that the Los Angeles 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.." 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.
