Top 4: Ubiquitous Canadian Actors

Not actors born in Canada, cause that would just be boring. If you watch enough science fiction on TV, or even low budget television in general, you start to notice that the same people pop up again and again on a specific group of shows. The reason? Most TV production is done in the Los Angeles area, but it's expensive there, so some have fled north to Canada, usually in the Vancouver area. The stars of these shows are usually American, but it'd be expensive to cast the bit parts and guest stars in LA and fly them north, so they usually find actors for those roles locally. But the talent pool is thin. Not to say that there aren't good actors, there just aren't as many, so even with fewer available jobs in Canada than there are in the US, these guys are on TV a lot. And enough came to mind that I'll be making a separate top 4 for actresses (or am I supposed to say "female actors"? that just seems lame).


#4. Richard Kahan: A disturbing number of younger Canadian actors and actresses got their start on a show called Edgemont, which was made for Canadian television but eventually showed up on cable here and I watched for some reason. It was a high school drama that featured incredibly low production values, absolutely no one on screen over 25 (no teachers, no parents, and only a couple of characters out of high school), and some painfully bad acting. Among those who could hold their own (including Smallville's Kristin Kreuk and Battlestar Galactica's Grace Park, who played a lesbian, but not in the awesome way many of her fans would like it to be) was Richard Kahan. His character grew from a minor role to a fairly prominent one, I think largely based on how much better he was than some of his costars.

After Edgemont, he landed guest roles on several Vancouver productions: Da Vinci's Inquest, Reunion, Stargate: Atlantis, Masters of Horror, and Supernatural, but is probably best known to American audiences as Marco Pacella, the NTAC science nerd on The 4400.

#3. Neil Grayston - Another guy who I first saw on Edgemont, but I first recognized his brilliance on the short lived series Wonderfalls, where he had a recurring role as a moronic store clerk named Alec, generally referred to as "the mouth breather." Wonderfalls is one of the few shows among any of these guys which wasn't filmed in the Vancouver area. For obvious reasons (the main character worked in a gift shop at Niagara Falls), production stayed around Toronto.

Aside from Wonderfalls, Grayston has appeared in U.C.: Undercover, Da Vinci's Inquest, Jeremiah, Smallville, Dead Like Me, The Dead Zone, and Supernatural. Currently, he has a supporting role on SciFi's Eureka as Douglas Fargo, the amusingly nerdy lackey at Global Dynamics.

#2. Nicholas Lea - Lea's been around long enough to at least look familiar to a lot of people, but most who actually recognize him will know him as Alex Krycek, a recurring villain on The X-Files, the first Vancouver production that I was aware was Vancouverian (edit: apparently the word is "Vancouverite"). Lea's been a staple in Canadian-filmed TV for fifteen years, with guest roles on The Commish, Highlander: The Series, Sliders, The Outer Limits, Andromeda, Whistler, and more recently on Kyle XY and Men in Trees. And those are just the shows I've heard of. He's also headed down to LA for an occasional non-Canadian role, and been in quite a few movies, but none, as far as I can tell, worth mentioning.

#1. Martin Cummins - I think this guy knows someone in the office that grants permits to film in British Columbia, because it seems like you can't film a TV show there without at least having him on once. His first major role was in 1989's Friday the 13th Part VIII - Jason Takes Manhattan, which was ironically filmed in Canada. From there, he began a long and impressive career as a TV actor, making him, in my opinion, the King of Vancouver television. Most recognizable either as Ames White, the main villain from Dark Angel's second season, or as Nick Boyle on Poltergeist - The Legacy. I also remember him fondly as the hockey coach from Life As We Know It, the short-lived ABC teen drama which mostly received press at the time for co-starring Kelly Osbourne (but don't let that scare you off, she's not that bad), but it was created by some of the writers of Freaks and Geeks (ones you've never heard of, not Judd Apatow), introduced Chris Lowell (Veronica Mars's Piz, and from the Grey's Anatomy spinoff), and featured other Canadian standout Missy Peregrym, who showed up on Heroes this year, and might end up on the Ubiquitous Canadian Actress list, if/when I get around to it.

But back to Martin Cummins. He's also made appearances on Vancouver series My Secret Identity (remember that one? A young (but no longer Stand By Me fat) Jerry O'Connell got blasted with radiation by the guy who played Andy Andy on Cheers and developed superpowers), 21 Jump Street (who would've thought Johnny Depp would end up more successful than Peter DeLuise? Oh, right... everyone), The Commish, Highlander, M.A.N.T.I.S. (Carl Lumbly, Dixon from Alias, in a sort of Iron Man ripoff), the 1990s version of The Outer Limits, Strange Frequency (a VH1 series that was supposed to be a "Rock 'N' Roll Twilight Zone", but it turned out to be more of a "crappy show"), Stargate SG-1, Black Sash (which starred the aforementioned Missy Peregrym), a recurring role on Smallville (once appearing alongside Missy Peregrym again), The Mountain, and Reunion. So, basically, everything. Almost all the roles I remember him in has him playing either a bad guy, some sort of government agent, or both, and he's actually pretty good in those parts.

Honorable Mention: Dominic Zamprogna (Jammer on Battlestar Galactica, and he was the lead character on Edgemont), Donnelly Rhodes (the Doctor from Battlestar Galactica has a huge number of Vancouver credits, but he's kinda cheating cause he was a successful actor for years and years before starting in on Canadian shows).