He laughs at obvious inconsistencies: "Evan Almighty was the first time I was on a red carpet, and the red carpet was actually green. It was a green movie, an environmentally sensitive movie. Our motto was, 'leave no trace.' For any fuel emissions caused by transportation, a tree was planted that in time would absorb the carbon.

"We recycled the wood from the ark and gave it to Habitat for Humanity to help with house-builds."

He calls his four months as Jordan Baxter, sometimes filming on a huge ark, co-starring with pairs of animals, "a great experience. I learned a lot from Steve Carell" who played his dad in Evan Almighty, currently in theaters. Carell, as Evan Baxter, is commissioned by God, (Morgan Freeman), to build an ark in the humorous tale of a modern-day Noah.
 
"From Steve, I learned about the comedic aspect of drama and how, sometimes, your best work, your best comedy comes from doing improvisations, from following your own instincts."

Morgan Freeman, on the other hand, "was really spiritual, very laid back. He had a very regal essence."

Interviewed while filming "Ben-10 and the Arms of Armageddon," a Cinemark made-for-TV film based on the animated teen-aged superhero, Phillips says: "I have all my regular friends and they're not star-struck at all, not that I'm a star. We still get together and do all the normal stuff we do, and I still go to church."

St. Margaret's Episcopal Church and School in San Juan Capistrano is where the teenager's musical ability was cultivated, as early as preschool.

"The first time I heard him sing in a preschool talent show, I thought I have never in my life heard a child this young sing this well," says Susan Remsberg, a teacher for 38 years, who has followed Phillips' career to the Great White Way and beyond.

"I went to see him as Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden," Remsberg recalled. "That was the summer after third grade. And I went again last year to see him when he played the Little Prince. It was amazing, so special, seeing him on Broadway, seeing his name on the marquis was incredible."

Even as a child, Graham sang in a way "that people said touched them," his mother Kathryn Phillips said. "Whether it was Ave Maria or Mack the Knife, people responded to him. I always knew he could sing, but when they asked him to perform at the Metropolitan Opera, I thought, 'I guess he really can sing.'"

At the Metropolitan Opera, he took up the role of Young Clyde in Francesca Zambello's world premiere of "An American Tragedy." His interpretation of "The Little Prince" earned him a "smashing" review from the New York Times.

There have been regional and local performances including a stint as Moses' son in "The Ten Commandments -- The Musical," at L.A.'s Kodak Theater starring with Val Kilmer. TV credits include: Crossing Jordan, Judging Amy, King of Queens and a Hallmark Movie titled "Love's Long Journey."

He has appeared as a soloist on NBC's Today Show and on Meat Loaf's "Bat out of Hell 3" album. He was also the youngest person to sing the national anthem to open a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game.

It all started because he liked to sing. "I was always singing which was often misinterpreted as loud," the Laguna Beach teenager jokes. In second grade, he auditioned and won the lead role in a Laguna Playhouse production of "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day."

He wasn't surprised by the effort and preparation required for opening night, just its revelation: "I loved it; at the very last minute I looked out at the crowd and realized, wow, this is amazing. This is what I really want to do."

It took just a tad longer to convince his parents, Layn and Kathryn Phillips, both attorneys. Since then, life has been full of amazing surprises, some inconsistencies and necessary rituals like make-up, which, "now I'm strangely used to," he jokes. "You have to go and get made-up and your hair done and they have to match it exactly how it was the day before."

Hurry up and wait is another one, he adds. "You'll be called to the set two or three hours before you're actually going to film anything.  It takes a really long time to film a scene that's maybe just 20 seconds," he said. "In one day you film what is about five minutes of a person's life."

Filming "Ben-10" on the Warner Brothers back lot in Los Angeles can be tedious except "when you're actually acting, and then it's amazing."
 
"I thought it would be really awesome to be a superhero in a movie. Now that I'm doing it, I realize that it's still the slow process of making a movie and, no matter how upbeat the actual scenes are, it's still going to be pretty slow."

The youngest of three children, his mother usually accompanies him on the set and helps him stay balanced. "Graham's able to juggle a lot of things simultaneously," she said. "On the set of Evan Almighty, on weekends he'd sit down and write [school] papers. He holds himself to a standard that makes it easy. If I had to push him, it wouldn't be fun for either of us and it wouldn't be worth it.

"He was on the St. Margaret's lacrosse team this year, and he wasn't a star there and that's good," she added. "He realizes everything has its place. When we're home on weekends, we go to church and our usual school activities."

His favorite role, as the Little Prince, reminds him of school and church, he said. "There was just so much symbolism that corresponds with Christianity, God and Jesus," he says. "It can be interpreted as just a children's book that's a fairy tale, or you can make it as complicated as you like."

Besides researching superheroes, Phillips drew on inner spiritual resources for Ben-10, set to be released later this year. "He's very frustrated because he has to go to school after he's spent the whole summer fighting aliens. He feels like if he told everyone he's a superhero, they'd like him a lot more. But he has to find that inner strength to not tell everyone and still not get frustrated."

Whether singing in church, hanging out with friends or performing, what is consistent is: "There are so many moments when you get this really happy feeling and it makes you want to do good. It makes you want to help people. It's such a surprise, how it's all been coming together," he adds. "But when you're having a life that you like and can keep it and do what you love, it's fun."