Murray Bartlett

From Soap Operas to the Streets of New York

Murray Bartlett was born in Sydney in 1971 and spent twenty years waiting for a role that matched his talent. He trained at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Australia and started out in local series such as Neighbours and Home and Away before packing his bags to try his luck in the United States in the late 1990s.

In 1998 he arrived in New York with little money and plenty of ambition. He landed a recurring guest role on Sex and the City, playing Oliver, a shoe distributor who moved in Carrie Bradshaw's social circle. But that brief spark did not bring an immediate flood of offers, and he had to keep working on smaller projects.

Nobody handed him anything.

Bartlett honed his craft in American daytime television for much of the 2000s. Between 2007 and 2009 he played Cyrus Foley on the soap opera The Guiding Light. It was a period of technical training in which he shot scenes at a frantic pace for a loyal audience, far from the industry's spotlight.

In 2014, HBO gave him his first real chance to shine in an auteur project with Looking. He played Dom, a San Francisco waiter trying to open his own Portuguese chicken restaurant while dealing with a midlife crisis. The series was canceled after two seasons and a final movie in 2016.

The Manager Who Broke the Glass Ceiling

Bartlett's luck changed in 2021 with the premiere of The White Lotus. Mike White cast him as Armond, the manager of a luxury hotel in Hawaii who loses his temper and his sobriety in front of the guests. His portrayal of a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown caught the attention of international critics.

He won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series in 2022 for this role. Bartlett gave the character a mix of toxic servility and vulnerability that avoided any easy caricature. His massive breakthrough came after he turned fifty.

And the gamble paid off.

That recognition allowed him to choose projects with a freedom he had never had before. In 2022 he appeared in the series Welcome to Chippendales, playing choreographer Nick De Noia. Shortly after, he joined one of the decade's biggest TV phenomena, based on a hit video game.

The Maturity of a Premium Supporting Actor

In 2023, he starred in the third episode of The Last of Us alongside Nick Offerman. His role as Frank in a post-apocalyptic love story earned him another nomination at the Television Academy Awards. Critics praised the chemistry between the two actors in a storyline that broke away from the series' usual violence.

He took part in the anthology series Extrapolations on Apple TV+ during 2023, directed by Scott Z. Burns. For this project he shot scenes exploring the effects of climate change in the near future. His schedule filled up with big-budget productions after years of failed auditions in small theaters.

But Bartlett never gave up his low profile off set.

Murray Bartlett joined the cast of the second season of Nine Perfect Strangers in 2025. Filming moved to the Austrian Alps to shoot a total of eight episodes produced by David E. Kelley for Hulu.