Ethan Phillips

Star Trek: Voyager seems to have attracted a certain percentage of drama, goodness knows, but there are also several people on the show who have had long, solid careers going back decades before the show debuted. I’ve seen the work of Ethan Phillips in the theatre, as I recall, before Voyager aired. I saw Glory in a classroom. And if those are both minor roles—I can’t even remember who he played in The Shadow—well, he still has a career onscreen that’s almost as old as I am, and that’s not nothing.

Phillips was born in New York. His father was the owner of Frankie & Johnnie’s, a steakhouse and former speakeasy. He got a BA in English lit from Boston University and an MFA from Cornell, and then he got to work acting. He appeared in a production of Eccentricities of a Nightingale for which Tennessee Williams wrote a new monologue for him to cover a dress change for Jill Eikenberry. Williams dictated the monologue to Phillips himself, apparently. He has one of those stage careers where you’re afraid to mention who he appeared with because someone will be annoyed at who you left out.

TV for him started with an uncredited 1978 appearance on The Doctors. Even if you leave out Benson and ST:V, he has had one of those TV careers where you’re not surprised to see him showing up in anything. Everything from One Life to Live to Law & Order to Touched by an Angel. He’s still going, in Girls and The Good Wife. He’s been a television staple almost my whole life and shows no signs of stopping that.

In movies, he started in Ragtime. He’s so far down the listing in that unbelievably packed cast that I’m not even going to bother counting. (I stopped the fourth time the alphabetical listings started over from “A.”) His movie listings are more sparse, though they do include Green Card and Jeffrey. He did both The Wild Thornberrrys and Rugrats Go Wild, about his only children’s work. And, yes, he was Mitch Gorfein in Inside Llewyn Davis. He’s also in a Purge movie, if that’s your idea of a good time. I admit I haven’t heard of a lot of his movies, but The Shadow is silly fun, at least, and of course there’s Glory.

He’s also crossed the beams. By which I mean that, in addition to Neelix, he’s done Star Wars. Only video games, but still. He’s done a fair amount of Trek, not just Neelix. It is worth noting that he cowrote a now-out-of-print Star Trek cookbook in the persona of Neelix, though. (Yes, it’s on my wishlist now.) He’s had a heck of a career, and he’s still going. He’s also one of the musicians of Star Trek; he plays the tenor sax in a jazz ensemble.