Zach Gilford
American actor

Zachary Michael Gilford (born January 14, 1982) is an American actor best known for his role as Matt Saracen on the NBC sports drama series Friday Night Lights. In 2021, he starred in the Netflix horror limited series Midnight Mass. In 2022, he appeared in the horror mystery-thriller series The Midnight Club, and in 2023, he had a main role in the horror drama miniseries The Fall of the House of Usher.
Early life and education
Gilford is the son of Anne and Steve Gilford. His mother is Lutheran, and his father is Jewish. A native of Evanston, Illinois, he graduated from Evanston Township High School and Northwestern University. He worked as a trip leader for Adventures Cross-Country and has led wilderness and adventure trips for teenagers to Alaska, British Columbia, California, Hawaii, and the South Pacific. Gilford also worked as a staff member for YMCA Camp Echo in Fremont, Michigan.
Career
In 2005, he appeared in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2006, Gilford landed a regular role in Friday Night Lights: the part of Matt Saracen in the main cast, from Season 1 through Season 3.
“Zach Gilford” enters the record as american actor. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Zach, Gilford and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Zach Gilford” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Zach, Gilford and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4490. VIAF identifies the subject as 12117372. The Library of Congress control number is no2008070327. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zach Gilford” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.