Background

Ethnicity: Nathan Fillion's ancestry includes French-Canadian, English, German, Norwegian, and Finnish/Swedish roots. His surname is French.

Nathan Fillion was born on March 27, 1971, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to June and Robert Fillion, both retired English teachers. Fillion has an older brother, Jeff Fillion, who decided to go into teaching. He was raised in Mill Woods neighborhood.

Nathan Fillion became an American citizen in 1997.

Education

Nathan Fillion studied at Holy Trinity Catholic High School and Concordia University College of Alberta. He wanted to be a high school drama teacher. In college, he majored in art and minored in drama while pursuing an acting career on the side.

Later, Fillion enrolled at the University of Alberta, where he became a part of its Kappa Alpha Society. With just one semester left to go to earn a degree at the University of Alberta, he picked up and moved to New York City.

Career

After taking classes at Theatresports Workshops, Fillion was spotted by an agent at the Fringe Theatre Festival. He played small roles in locally filmed productions such as the ABC TV movie Ordeal in the Arctic (1993) starring Richard Chamberlain and the Canadian feature Strange and Rich (1994) before being offered the role of Joey Buchanan on the daytime soap One Life to Live.

During his three year stint with the soap, Fillion was nominated for a Daytime Emmy and a Soap Opera Digest Award as Outstanding Younger Actor. In 1996, he moved to Los Angeles, where he landed guest roles on TV shows such as Spin City, The Outer Limits and Miss Match. He also made his major motion picture debut in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998).

The same year, he was cast as a regular on the ABC sitcom Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place, alongside fellow Canadian Ryan Reynolds. When the series ended in 2001, he was quickly picked up for a starring role as Captain Malcolm Reynolds in Joss Whedon's new sci-fi drama Firefly. He won a 2003 Cinescape Genre Face of the Future Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films for his work on the show, but unfortunately, despite an enthusiastic fan base, the series was canceled after just one season.

Whedon then cast Fillion in the recurring role of Caleb, a villainous woman hater in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and when Firefly was picked up for a big-screen continuation Fillion joined the rest of the cast in the film, called Serenity (2005).

In 2005 and 2006, he did voice work for Justice League Unlimited and Jade Empire. During this time period, Fillion also got featured in the horror flick Slither.

In 2007, he starred in Adrienne Shelly’s romantic comedy Waitress and White Noise 2: The Light. That year, the actor also appeared in six episodes of Drive and lent his voice to the video game Halo 3. He joined the cast of Desperate Housewives and Robot Chicken the same year.

Fillion was cast in the lead role of Richard Castle in the crime comedy-drama series Castle in 2009. The series was a hit and helped further cement his career. In 2010, he appeared in Nailing Your Wife, a spoof adult web video on Spike. A year later, he guest-starred in the web series The Morning, The Guild and Husbands. In 2011, he also lent his voice to Hal Jordan / Green Lantern in Green Lantern: Emerald Knights.

Starting from 2011, the actor appeared as Cactoid Jim in The Thrilling Adventure Hour, a podcasted live stage show. He played Dogberry in the independent flick titled Much Ado About Nothing, based on William Shakespeare’s play of the same name, in 2012. In 2014, Fillion began voicing Cayde-6, a minor character in the video game Destiny. Over the next years, his role became significant with expansions to the game.

He began appearing in the comedy web series Con Man in 2015; he also served as the executive producer of the show. A year later, he joined the cast of Modern Family as Rainer Shine. He was then cast in the recurring role of Gary West in Netflix’s Santa Clarita Diet. He appeared in nine episodes of A Series of Unfortunate Events, a Netflix comedy-drama series, in 2018. The same year, he got featured in two episodes of American Housewife. Currently, the actor is busy with his project The Rookie, a crime drama series.

On July 16, 2018, Fillion and director Allan Ungar released a live-action short film based on the Naughty Dog franchise Uncharted. The short immediately went viral and was praised for its witty humor, action, and ability to stay true to the source material. Fans and critics took to social media and began campaigning for Netflix to turn it into a series while referring to it as one of the best adaptations of a video game.

Achievements

• Fillion first gained recognition for his work on One Life to Live in the contract role of Joey Buchanan, for which he was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actor in a Drama Series as well as for his supporting role as Johnny Donnelly in the sitcom Two Guys and a Girl.
  
  BuddyTV ranked him #10 on its list of "TV's 100 Sexiest Men of 2009", #19 in 2010, #20 in 2011 and #39 in 2012; #7 on its list of "The 15 Best Drama Lead Actors of the 2011-2012 TV Season"; named his character's relationship with the other main character as #18 (and the Best Flirting Relationship) on its list "Love Is All Around: Best TV Relationships of 2010", #13 (and the Best Delayed Relationship) on its list of "The Best Relationships of 2011", #15 on its list of "The Special Relationships: TV’s Top 50 Love Stories of the Past Decade", #1 on its list "Love... Or Not: The Top 12 Will-They-or-Won't-They Couples of 2012" and #2 on its list "Lip Smacking Good: The Best Kisses of 2012"; named Castle as #6 on its list of "The 11 Best Returning TV Shows of 2011", #11 on "The 15 Best Dramas of the 2011-2012 TV Season" and #12 on "The 12 Best Dramas of 2012".

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Ordeal in the Arctic

    (The accident that Ordeal in the Arctic depicted, occurred...)

    1993
  • White Noise 2 - The Light

    (Abe Dale (Nathan Fillion) has a good job and a loving fam...)

    2007
  • Trucker

    (A trucker leading a life free of depth - and on the way t...)

    2008
  • Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox

    (Flash realizes the world has changed and he no longer has...)

    2013
  • Blast from the Past

    (A man raised in a 1950s era bomb shelter emerges into the...)

    1999
  • The Death of Superman

    (It's a fight to the finish when Superman becomes the only...)

    2018
  • Outing Riley

    (When a Chicago architect from a meat and potatoes Irish-C...)

    2004
  • Wonder Woman

    (When Steve Trevor crash-lands on the mystical island of T...)

    2009
  • Reign of the Supermen

    (As authorities investigate the stolen body of Superman fr...)

    2019
  • Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters

    (The thrilling adventures of Percy Jackson, the son of Pos...)

    2013
  • Super

    (Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, and Kevin Bacon brin...)

    2010
  • Justice League: Throne of Atlantis

    (It's an all-new, epic chapter from the DC Universe in whi...)

    2015
  • Night Hunter

    (The hunt is on as a detective races against time to stay ...)

    2018
  • Much Ado About Nothing

    (Joss Whedon's sexy and contemporary spin on Shakespeare's...)

    2013
  • Dracula 2000

    (When a team of techno-savvy thieves break into a high-sec...)

    2000
  • Slither

    (A small town is taken over by an alien plague, turning re...)

    2006
  • Green Lantern: Emerald Knights

    (An anthology of 6 tales that show Hal Jordan and the Gree...)

    2011
  • Waitress

    (A small-town waitress stuck in a lousy marriage finds lov...)

    2007
  • Monsters University

    (The early days of Mike and Sully - they meet at Monsters ...)

    2013
  • Cars 3

    (Blindsided by a new generation of racers, Lightning McQue...)

    2017
  • Justice League: Doom

    (The Justice League are Earth's finest superheroes and pro...)

    2012
  • Serenity

    (A passenger with a deadly secret. Six rebels on the run. ...)

    2005
  • Saving Private Ryan

    (Based on a World War II drama. US soldiers try to save th...)

    1994

• TV series

  • Modern Family Season 7

    (Catch up on all the laughs, loves and lunacy with the Dun...)

    2016
  • Firefly

    (Sci-fi western set 500 years in the future, in the afterm...)

    2002
  • Castle

    (Rick Castle is one of the world's most successful crime a...)

    2009
  • The Rookie

    (Starting over isn't easy for small-town guy.)

    2018
  • Desperate Housewives Season 4

    (The fourth season heats up. Picking up from the third sea...)

    2007

• Video game

  • The Art of Halo 5: Guardians

    (In Halo 5: Guardians, game developer 343 Industries conti...)

    2015
  • Halo 3 2007
  • Saints Row: Gat out of Hell 2015

Religion

Although he attended a Catholic high school, Nathan Fillion is non-religious. He dislikes talking about religion.

Politics

During the lead-up to the 2012 elections in the United States, Fillion weighed in on the political debate on his Twitter feed-clearly favoring Obama. He once tweeted in reply to his friend, Robert Kazinsky: " I don’t particularly like tweeting politics but Romney is such a slimy lying toolbag.” …I’m gonna say run with this."

Views

Nathan Fillion and (author) PJ Haarsma co-founded their own charity in 2006. The aptly named Kids Need To Read is a charitable organization aimed at increasing literacy and getting books into the hands of underprivileged kids by helping supply them to libraries.

Fillion's association with Charity: Water garnered over $60,000 worth of donations in 2019.

Quotations: "It costs nothing to say something kind. Even less to shut up altogether."

"My worst day is still a really good day. I complain, but I catch myself and count my blessings. I am truly blessed."

"Do something today you've been afraid to do. A decision based on fear is the wrong decision."

"I like to say there's certain things you can't take back: One of them is 'I love you,' and one of them is bullets."

"Improv as an actor makes you present in the moment. You listen, you're attentive. You're not acting so much as reacting, which is what you're doing in life all the time."

Membership

Nathan Fillion was a member of the Kappa Alpha Society.

• 

  The Kappa Alpha Society (ΚΑ), founded in 1825, was the progenitor of the modern fraternity system in North America. It was the first of the fraternities which would eventually become known as the Union Triad. In addition, Baird's Manual states that ΚΑ, unlike other fraternities with claims to the contrary, has maintained a continuous existence since its foundation, making it the oldest undergraduate fraternity that exists today.

  Kappa Alpha Society

Personality

Nathan Fillion is an avid fan of video games and collects comic books. Nathan is known for his excellent sense of humor.

Physical Characteristics: Nathan Fillion is deaf in his left ear. He lost his hearing in that ear in 1977.

Interests

• drawing, rollerblading

• Politicians

  Justin Trudeau

• Writers

  Close to Shore: A True Story of Terror in an Age of Innocence by Michael Capuzzo, A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, World War Z by Max Brooks, The Spenser detective novels by Robert B. Parker

• Artists

  Martin Firrell

• Sport & Clubs

  hockey, beach volleyball, Edmonton Oilers

• Music & Bands

  The Monkees, Jason Mraz, Martin Sexton

Connections

Coming to Fillion’s love life, he has dated many women to date. In the past, he had been in relationships with Stana Katic, Kate Luyben and Krista Allen.

Father:

Robert "Bob" Fillion

Mother:

June "Cookie" Fillion

Brother:

Jeff Fillion

ex-girlfriend:

Stana Katic

ex-girlfriend:

Kate Luyben

ex-girlfriend:

Krista Allen

colleague:

Gerard Butler

colleague:

Elizabeth Banks

colleague:

Liv Tyler

colleague:

Kevin Bacon

colleague:

Elisabeth Moss

colleague:

Henry Cavill

References

• Nathan Fillion