Australian actor Julian Haig is well on the way to establishing himself in the notoriously tough world of American television. Just three years after graduating, he landed a recurring role in Riverdale, a big-budget teen drama series shown on The CW. Haig played Elio in eight episodes of the second season. Fittingly, the show is one of the most popular in Australia, frequently appearing in the country’s top-ten most-watched shows.

Haig comes from an artistic family—his father is a scriptwriter, his mother a fine artist, and his sister is fellow actor Georgina Haig. Growing up on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, he decided to devote his life to acting and began studying at the 16th Street Actors Studio in nearby Melbourne. After graduating in 2015, Haig immediately began looking to crack America. In 2017, he got his first notable break playing Prince Gregor in an episode of popular ABC fantasy series Once Upon a Time. This was followed by similar roles in shows such as Lucifer and The Arrangement, as well as a regular role in Canadian web series The Actress Diaries, before he landed his Riverdale role.

More recently, Haig has began appearing in Australian-made shows, including a role in the inventive, Zoom-based series Retrograde, which featured a group of millennials drowning their sorrows at a “virtual bar” in response to the global Covid pandemic. He has also made guest appearances in comedy-drama series Five Bedrooms and on innovative talk show The Daily Talk Show, where he discussed the art of acting and improvisation.