PHILLIP ANDRE
BOTELLO

Phillip Andre Botello’s route into acting began with a schoolroom performance. In a 2021 Authority Magazine interview, he recalled a teacher having him recite a speech from On the Waterfront and encouraging him to act. He described growing up in Los Angeles and San Diego and later studying at Juilliard. His account of an early audition is revealing: he brought a classroom mime exercise into a screen audition and discovered that a technique has to fit the situation in which it is used.

In Daniel Robbins’s Pledge, Botello plays Ethan, one of three college outsiders drawn to an exclusive social club. IFC Center screened the film in January 2019 and identifies Zack Weiner and Zachery Byrd as the other two friends. The invitation offers belonging, but the initiation makes that promise dangerous. Botello’s place in the trio helps make the group’s desire understandable before the horror takes over. The viewer needs to recognize the attraction of being accepted for the threat of exclusion to have force.

The Art of Self-Defense (2019), written and directed by Riley Stearns, places him as Kennith in an ensemble led by Jesse Eisenberg, Alessandro Nivola and Imogen Poots. Its dark comedy builds around the rules and hierarchy of a karate school. It is another setting in which joining a group does not settle the question of safety. Botello’s supporting role belongs within that social structure, where ordinary introductions and small exchanges can carry an uncomfortable weight.

Aaron Pagniano’s Sunset on the River Styx (2020) gives him the central role of Will, opposite Jacqueline Jandrell as Ashe. Their meeting leads into a surreal horror story in which time and perception become unstable. Botello has more room here to sustain a character through uncertainty, rather than contribute one part of a larger group. His later credits include Daniel in Jordan Downey’s The Cycle (2026), alongside Deborah Ann Woll and Jeffrey Donovan. These films offer several ways into an independent-film career that moves between social discomfort and the uncanny.