High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Alan Cooper "Zach" Spaulding is a fictional character on the daytime soap opera Guiding Light. He was portrayed by Nicholas Art from 2002 to 2008.Alan Cooper Spaulding was born in the summer of 1999 to the wealthy Phillip Spaulding and his working class wife, Harley Cooper. Born in the wake of his grandfather Alan's heart attack, the child was named after Phillip's adoptive father, Alan Spaulding. Days after his birth, Harley decided to nickname the boy "Zach" from a character in one of Phillip's early novels about a young artist who declares his freedom from his wealthy family. Unfortunately, Zach's family life would be torn apart less than a year later, in 2000, when it was discovered that Phillip had had an affair with Beth Raines and the child she was carrying was his.