Actor Zach Gilford, a native of Evanston, IL and graduate of Northwestern University, where he starred in theater productions of “Equus” and “The Laramie Project,” had his first starring role on the critically acclaimed, but under-watched “Friday Night Lights” (NBC, 2006-07), Peter Berg’s television adaptation of his 2004 film about life in a small Texas town fixated on its winning high school football team. In the television version, Gilford played backup quarterback Matt Saracen, a 16-year-old kid trying to deal with his absentee mother and his father serving in Iraq, who is thrust into the