Ethan Peck
Ethan Peck is an actor, born 1986.
The surname arrives before he does. Ethan Peck is the grandson of Gregory Peck and Greta Kukkonen, the son of a documentary filmmaker who runs a veterans organization and of an abstract painter, and he grew up in Los Angeles playing classical cello before any of the acting started. His first credit in this catalog is a small part in Passport to Paris (1999), when he was a child.
For a decade he took the parts that go to good-looking young men with a famous name and nothing yet to show for themselves: Patrick Verona in the television version of 10 Things I Hate About You, Andre in The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010), Sean in Twelve, Constantin in In Time, then a stretch of low-budget horror in Nothing Left to Fear, The Curse of Sleeping Beauty and Tell Me How I Die.
Spock rescued the career, which is not a sentence anyone could have written in advance. Taking on a role identified with Leonard Nimoy is usually a losing proposition. Peck's solution was to play the effort rather than the result, a young man visibly holding two halves of himself apart, and it worked well enough that the part has followed him across four series: Star Trek: Discovery, Short Treks, Strange New Worlds and Very Short Treks.
The other interesting job of the period is The Midnight Sky (2020), where he plays the younger self of the film's lead, an assignment with no room to hide, and The Unholy Trinity (2025) is his most recent film work of any size.
Movies (12)
TV (6)
Where to start with Ethan Peck
Skip the chronology and go straight to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It is the only place Peck plays Spock as a lead rather than a legacy reference, with room for comedy and for the character to be wrong about things, and it is comfortably his best work.
Star Trek: Discovery is where the role began and is worth it for the introduction alone, though the series has other priorities. Star Trek: Short Treks is the concentrate, and the fastest way to decide whether the performance is for you.
Outside the franchise the pickings thin out. The Midnight Sky is the best-made film in the pool and hands him a genuinely awkward technical assignment. Penny Dreadful: City of Angels is the most interesting failure here, 10 Things I Hate About You is the teen-television curio, and The Curse of Sleeping Beauty is for completists only.