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What's New
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| Shawn Ashmore | Judith Klassen
Movie Entertainment
February 2010
I recently sat down in Toronto with Canadian actor Shawn Ashmore to talk about his latest projects, having a twin in the business and playing doctor. Ashmore laughs when I suggest it might put stress on brotherly love if Shawn or his identical twin Aaron (Smallville) were to work as the other’s stand-in. “You’d be surprised how many people on film sets will say, ‘Oh, you have a twin brother – and vice versa to Aaron – does he want to come in and do stunts?’” Ashmore shakes his head. “Right, it’s too dangerous for me, but I’ll put my brother in the line of fire.”
Ashmore has been making an impression on audiences and filmmakers since his first major role at age 14 on writer/ director Will Dixon’s Guitarman. Says Dixon, “I just knew Shawn had that ‘something’ the moment he auditioned, and he proceeded to deliver the goods when he arrived on set. He was nominated for a Gemini for his performance and he certainly deserved it.”
Now 30, Ashmore has worked on a slate of exceedingly diverse projects – and has emoted with an impressive list of thespians. He has been Stockard Channing’s troubled son, Hugh Jackman's mutant soldier, Halle Berry’s rival and Anna Paquin’s superpowered boy toy. He has re-enacted the Marathon of Hope as beloved Canadian hero Terry Fox, a role he “didn’t want to mess up.” He has walked the line between victim and aggressor as Denys, the porn actor in writer/ director Thom Fitzgerald’s indie 3 Needles, and is currently filming the remake of the ’80s horror flick Mother’s Day with Rebecca De Mornay (famous for dating another Canadian hero, Leonard Cohen).
Truly a true-north boy, Ashmore was photographed in 2008 for Cosmo’s Naked Male Centrefolds wearing nothing but a Canadian flag – patriotism looks good on him. And maybe it was his affinity for the cold that made him the perfect choice for Iceman Bobby Drake in the X-Men trilogy – a role that garnered him the MTV Breakthrough Star Award in 2004.
As much as he loves working on big budget action pictures, Ashmore likes to “mix it up” and take roles in small, serious films as well. However, he is quick to assert that working with the likes of Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen on the X-Men flicks is a “real” acting experience.
He doesn’t approach a character who can turn his body into living ice any differently than he approaches a severely dysfunctional porn star dying of AIDS. As Ashmore once said, “For me as an actor, the thing I want to do is to keep challenging myself and playing different characters. That’s what keeps it fun for me. It’s important to be part of projects that have something to say, even if they don’t have something to say to anybody else, but I learn something.”
When asked about other superheroes he’d like to portray, Ashmore says he figures you only get to play one comic book character so he’s trying to own Bobby Drake.
In his new TV series, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, Ashmore dons the scrubs and swagger of an ambulance doctor to play lusty, hard-drinking “Fitz” from Vincent Lam’s story collection of the same name.
Going from cartoon-inspired action to the battlefield of the emergency room is a dramatic shift. In response to Lam’s mock disappointment that he didn’t bring his superpowers with him, Ashmore quips, “I tried to work in the black leather suit and the action scenes – they just wouldn’t go for it.”
Ashmore will doff the leather and scrubs and don some wool and gore-tex
later this month for his new role in the movie Frozen, the scary story of three snow boarders who are stranded on a chairlift after the resort has closed for the weekend. Sounds like the kind of movie that would have called for a stunt double.
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