Alessandro Juliani
Alessandro Juliani is an actor, born 1975.
Alessandro Juliani has had the career that Vancouver's production industry makes possible: a quarter century of science fiction and fantasy, mostly in supporting roles, mostly better than the material around him. He is best known as Lieutenant Felix Gaeta on Battlestar Galactica, the tactical officer whose job is to say the numbers out loud, and whose arc across four seasons became one of the show's genuine surprises. Gaeta works because Juliani plays competence as a personality trait rather than a plot function.
He is a specialist in the intelligent man who is not in charge. Emil Hamilton on Smallville, Jacapo Sinclair on The 100, Dr. Cerberus on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: engineers, scientists and technicians, all written as functional, all played with something extra underneath. His film credits follow the same pattern, small parts in big pictures, an officer in Man of Steel and an ape called Spear in War for the Planet of the Apes.
The other half of the career is voice work and it is substantial. He is L in the English dub of Death Note, which for a large slice of the anime audience is the only credit that matters, and he was Toa Vakama in the Bionicle films and Aaron Fox in Nexo Knights. He also, with no apparent embarrassment, voiced a run of princes and courtiers across a stack of Barbie features, which is either a footnote or a demonstration of exactly how professional a working actor has to be.
Movies (20)
- Man of Steel (2013)
- War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
- Final Destination (2000)
- Barbie as The Princess & the Pauper (2004)
- Barbie: Fairytopia (2005)
- Barbie Fairytopia: Mermaidia (2006)
- Barbie as the Island Princess (2007)
- Barbie Mariposa (2008)
- Ratchet & Clank (2016)
- Barbie Mariposa & the Fairy Princess (2013)
- Battlestar Galactica: Razor (2007)
- Barbie in Rock 'N Royals (2015)
- Chaos Theory (2008)
- Love Happens (2009)
- Elegy (2008)
- Needle in a Timestack (2021)
- Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (2009)
- My Scene Goes Hollywood: The Movie (2005)
- Bionicle 2: Legends of Metru Nui (2004)
- Bionicle 3: Web of Shadows (2005)
TV (25)
- Smallville (2001)
- The 100 (2014)
- Battlestar Galactica (2004)
- Dark Angel (2000)
- Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018)
- Maid (2021)
- X-Men: Evolution (2000)
- Taken (2002)
- ¡Mucha Lucha! (2002)
- Battlestar Galactica (2003)
- LEGO Nexo Knights (2015)
- Almost Human (2013)
- Jeremiah (2002)
- Beast Machines: Transformers (1999)
- Away (2020)
- LEGO DREAMZzz (2023)
- Supernatural Academy (2022)
- Legend of Earthsea (2004)
- Kong: King of the Apes (2016)
- Super Monsters (2017)
- Littlest Pet Shop: A World of Our Own (2018)
- Ōban Star-Racers (2006)
- The Adventures of T-Rex (1992)
- Captain N: The Game Master (1989)
- Alice (2009)
Where to start with Alessandro Juliani
Battlestar Galactica is the reason to be here. Gaeta spends three seasons looking like furniture and then becomes one of the most interesting characters on the show, and Juliani plays the shift so gradually that you cannot point at the episode where it happens. Watch the whole thing.
If that is too large a commitment, The 100 gives him a similar role at a faster clip, and Sinclair is the closest thing that series has to a moral center in its early years. Smallville is the long-running comfort version.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is where he gets to be funny, playing a horror host with a fondness for theatre. Man of Steel and War for the Planet of the Apes are a few minutes each, and the second is much the better film.
Battlestar Galactica and the science fiction leads
Felix Gaeta is the role that made his name, a bridge officer who starts as background and ends up carrying one of the series' most uncomfortable arcs. The 100 gave him a comparable long run a decade later, and both parts use the same quiet, precise register.
The Vancouver genre television years
Two decades of work in the shows that shoot in British Columbia, which is most of American science fiction television. Smallville gave him a recurring role as Emil Hamilton, and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is where he is most obviously enjoying himself.
The animation and family voice work
A large parallel career in Vancouver's animation studios. He voiced L in the English dub of Death Note, which is the role anime viewers know him for, and the Barbie films are the steady work that funded everything else. X-Men: Evolution is the best of the series work.