Raphael Sbarge

The supporting actor who survived the eighties

Raphael Sbarge grew up in a Manhattan apartment where theater was not a hobby but the family business. His mother designed costumes for Broadway and his father directed plays. By the age of five, he was already walking around the set of Sesame Street.

In 1983, he made his big-screen debut in Risky Business. He played Glenn, one of the friends who helped Tom Cruise turn his house into a brothel while his parents were away. The film grossed $63 million at the American box office at the time.

But Sbarge didn't get stuck in teen movies. He moved into theater and television with a speed that was unusual in New York circles. He worked on Broadway alongside Faye Dunaway in The Curse of an Aching Heart when he was still in his twenties.

Persistence was her greatest tool.

During the 1990s, he specialized in supporting roles on hit series. He appeared in Star Trek: Voyager as Michael Jonas for five episodes in 1996. In Hollywood, being a recognizable face is often more profitable than being a fleeting star.

The voice behind the console controller

In 2003, his career took a technical turn that few actors of his generation managed to exploit. He lent his voice to Carth Onasi in the video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. And it was not a paycheck job completed in an afternoon.

His performance struck a chord with the gaming community. So in 2007, BioWare called him back for an ambitious project called Mass Effect. There, he brought to life Kaidan Alenko, a character he played throughout the original trilogy until 2012.

Kaidan Alenko became one of the narrative pillars of the franchise.

The actor recorded thousands of lines of dialogue for this project. The voice capture process for video games demands a level of technical precision that Sbarge handles with apparent ease. In 2011, he returned to mainstream television with the role of Archie Hopper in Once Upon a Time.

He played the town's psychologist and, at the same time, Jiminy Cricket. The ABC series ran for seven seasons and gave him a global visibility that film had never granted him so directly.

The move into directing and documentary film

Sbarge decided that telling stories from in front of the camera was not enough. In 2014, he founded Green Wish, a nonprofit organization, and began directing socially and environmentally focused pieces. His work behind the camera seeks a realism that avoids the artifice of major studios.

He directed LA Foodways in 2019. The documentary series examines the history of agriculture in Los Angeles and the problems of food waste. Critics also gave positive reviews to its dry, direct approach.

She isn't after easy applause.

In 2022, he premiered the documentary feature Only in Theaters. The film follows the Laemmle family's struggle to keep their art-house cinemas alive in an era dominated by digital platforms. Filming stretched over more than two years to capture the decline and the attempted revival of the business after the health crisis of 2020.

In 2023, he returned to mainstream horror with a role in The Exorcist: Believer. He played Pastor Don Revans in a production with a budget of $30 million. The film was shot mainly on location in Georgia and South Carolina.