Friction nonlinearity and uncertainty are the main factors affecting the highly performance control of electromagnetic actuators. In this paper, a nonlinear adaptive robust control strategy is proposed of electromagnetic actuators with friction nonlinearity and uncertainty compensation. First, the dynamical model of the electromagnetic actuator is established considering nonlinearity and uncertainty. Then, an adaptive robust controller is designed based on the continuously differentiable friction model to ensure that the control input is continuously and bounded. In the design of the controller, the unfavorable effects of unknown parameters in the electromagnetic actuator are eliminated by constructing a parameter adaptive law. Meanwhile, in order to improve the tracking accuracy of the electromagnetic actuator, a nonlinear robust control law is designed to ensure the robustness of the controller. The stability analysis by Lyapunov function shows that the asymptotic tracking effect can be obtained when only parameter uncertainty exists in the closed-loop system of the electromagnetic actuator, and the consistent bounded stability can be ensured when the system also exists uncertain nonlinearity. Extensive comparative results verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method.