Chris Gorham ’96

Chris Gorham ’96 currently stars as blind CIA operative, Auggie Anderson, in USA’s hit original series Covert Affairs, now entering its third season.

Over the last couple of years, Gorham actively has sought ways to use social media to engage fans of his projects, including USA’s Character Chatter, Twitter and Facebook. He was the first to tweet under Glamour magazine’s Twitter handle @glamourmag for the midseason return of Covert Affairs. During the one midseason of the show, Gorham directed and produced Globe Tracker which highlights the international nature of the show through video and photos that he shot while on location. He also engaged the show’s fans through the Covert Affairs Tweetcast: Mission Budapest, a six week interactive episode that unfolded over Twitter in real time.

On the big screen, Gorham starred alongside Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson and Terrence Howard in The Ledge, which competed in the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. He completed starring roles in three other independent films in 2011; Answer This! with Arielle Kebbel and Chris Parnell, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend with Alyssa Milano and Somebody's Hero.

Gorham’s list of TV credits is lengthy, and includes some of the most popular and critically lauded shows from the past decade. In 2007, Chris Gorham landed on both the sexiest list of People magazine and ABC’s Ugly Betty. He played Betty’s accountant boyfriend, the endearing Henry.

He then went to the role of a cold-blooded serial killer in the Jon Turteltaub-produced Harper’s Island on CBS. The show was a serialized horror story about a group of friends who met on an island off the Seattle coast for a destination wedding. Later, Gorham adeptly turned leading man on the acclaimed action-adventure drama series Jake 2.0, where he starred as Jake Foley. He was also a series regular on the NBC comedy Out of Practice opposite Henry Winkler, Ty Burrell, Stockard Channing and Jennifer Tilly.

Additional series regular television credits include Medical Investigation, Odyssey 5, and Ryan Murphy’s Popular, which also featured his wife, Anel ‘98. Earlier in his career Gorham even had a four-episode appearance in Party of Five and the role of a lovelorn ghost in a fan-favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode.

Gorham made his feature film debut in acclaimed director Danny Boyle’s A Life Less Ordinary, with Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz. In direct contrast, he starred opposite Anne Hathaway as a missionary to Tonga in the film The Other Side of Heaven for producer Gerald Molen.

On the stage, he guest starred in the Off-Broadway production Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell at the Minetta Lane Theatre, and performed in the play The Water Children at The Matrix Theatre.

In addition to his on-screen credits, Gorham generously gave back to UCLA in 2008 by serving as a judge for the annual Spring Sing competition sponsored by the UCLA Alumni Association.

After landing on People’s 2007 list of the “Sexiest Men Alive,” Gorham discussed the notoriety with UCLA Magazine.

“My manager emailed me with the news,” he said. “I was flattered. I can’t say I hadn’t wanted to be included in that issue, but I do recognize that I was put in the ‘nerd’ section.”

Gorham said he looked to his wife for guidance on his novel status. “I asked Anel what she thinks is the sexiest thing about me. She said, ‘Your hands. Your big manly hands.’”

The modest Gorham offered his fellow Bruins some valuable tips for making the list. “Do what David Beckham and I did,” he advised, “camp out in the lobby of People’s editorial offices and refuse to eat until they put you on the list.”

Chris and Anel have two sons and a daughter.