Biography

Chris was born and raised in Kansas, working as a professional editor before he discovered a passion for acting in the nearby indie film scene. He is best known for his work with Vince Gilligan and Aaron Paul in "El Camino: A Breaking Story"; Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks in "News of the World"; Vincent D'Onofrio, Dane DeHaan, and Ethan Hawke in "The Kid"; and Merritt Wever, Scott Frank, and Steven Soderbergh as PASTOR GARRET MOORE in the series finale of the 3x Emmy-winning NETFLIX Original "Godless".

His father moved from the West Coast to the Midwest and started his own business, which he successfully ran for over fifty years. His mother got her degree in education and raised a family over a thirty year range. His paternal grandparents immigrated from Holland to the United States, while his maternal grandparents made their home in many small towns throughout the Midwest.

Chris received a part in the first film he auditioned for, and while working on those indie sets he prioritized studying the craft and as many details as possible of each crew position. In just five short years, he had appeared in over one hundred films, TV shows, webisodes, and commercials all over the country; over twenty of which won awards, including Regional Emmys, and four individual Best Acting awards. He'd also evolved his work to behind the camera as well, collaborating as a director, producer, editor, and in casting - winning seven awards for films directed, and receiving the 2014 Emerging Filmmaker Award from the Kansas City Film Fest.

This culminated in new goals, as well as a desire to join the episodic storytelling movement. The following years saw him quickly turn SAG-AFTRA and expand into big-budget features with D'Onofrio's directorial debut "The Kid", joining the Breaking Bad universe in "El Camino" as SEAN LIEBOLD, "News of the World", his Supporting Lead role as D.A. Sam Taylor in "End of the Rope", and more.

He's also did break into the episodic world, with appearances in SHOWTIME'S "Waco: the Aftermath" (Dowdle Brothers), CW's "Roswell, New Mexico", Little Marvin and Lena Waithe's "Them" (Amazon Prime), working with Ernest R. Dickerson and Kyle Gallner in CBS's "Interrogation", Scott Frank and Steven Soderbergh's Emmy-winning Netflix original series "Godless" (with Merritt Wever), Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment-produced TNT pilot "Monsters of God" (with Lauren Ambrose and Brian Geraghty), NBC'S "The Night Shift" (with Ken Leung), Robert Rodriguez's "From Dusk Til Dawn", EPIX'S "Graves" (with Chris Lowell), and more.

Over his 16 year acting career, his passion for bringing roles to life with authenticity and empathy is only rivaled by his work ethic and dedication to the beautiful collaboration that is the craft of filmmaking.
- IMDb mini biography by: Rob Bij

Dedicating it to the unfading memory of his grandma, Bylsma wrote, directed, and played "himself" in Elaine (2016), a short film that grapples with the difficult realities of dementia.

When initially auditioning for El Camino (2019), Chris had only a fake script where his character was playing video games before a gun was later pulled in the scene. Feeling like the tape needed a final touch, he took the video game audio of "RAGE" from the intro of Problem Dog (2011) episode 407, where Jesse Pinkman plays the first-person shooter while enduring flashbacks of Gale. Isolating as much of the game's score, sound effects, and in-game dialogue as possible from the scene, Bylsma edited that audio in underneath his performance so that - even for just an audition in the Breaking Bad universe - his character "Sean" would be playing the same game as Pinkman had. Two weeks later, he got the part.

If Night Comes (2014) was originally slated to be a structured improv mini-series directed by Bylsma within a larger series, just a few short episodes interspersed throughout the last-day-on-earth-themed webseries Withered World (2013). What began as a short concept starring Tosin Morohunfola as a filmmaker spending his last day documenting the lives of those around him, grew into an eleven-part series that was nearly entirely improvised, and later was re-edited and presented as its own stand-alone feature film. Bylsma states that this experimental style of filmmaking was a huge influence on him as a filmmaker and even going forward as an actor.

Before the scene was filmed for the series finale of Godless (2017) where Pastor Garret Moore arrives, Scott Frank shared the "Tis A Fear Thing" poem secretly with Chris Bylsma, and revealed that none of the series regular cast knew he was going to deliver this unscripted poem about Love at the funeral. Running three cameras at once, Frank was able to capture the authentic emotions of all the characters that were pouring out during the magic of that first "surprise" take of the scene.

When he was cast as Charlie Bowdre in Vincent D'Onofrio's feature film directorial debut The Kid (2019), Bylsma created & weathered his own version of the iconic picture of Bowdre with his wife, Manuela. Chris wanted to carry it with him throughout filming, as Charlie himself had carried it everywhere. In December of 1880 Pat Garrett and his posse mistook Charlie for Billy the Kid and killed him, and Garrett took the photograph from Charlie's pocket. To honor that "rea life cycle", when Bylsma wrapped on the film he left the handmade prop with Ethan Hawke, who played Sherriff Garrett in the film.