Benjamin Ayres’ career has spanned both television and feature films. On the film side, he was most recently seen opposite Catherine Keener and Matt Craven in he starred as Dr. Zachary Miller in the highly acclaimed, CTV/NBC medical drama “Saving Hope,” which ran for five seasons. Ayres stars alongside Alison Sweeney in Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ “The Chronicle Mysteries” franchise. He guest-starred in an episode of the CW series “Burden of Truth,” and in The Hallmark Channel’s “Falling For Vermont” and he is a series regular in the new Canadian TV series “Detention Adventure.”
Ayres is widely known for his role as Cancer Cowboy, the chain-smoking sex addict with a morbid death obsession, in the critically acclaimed cult hit CBC series “jPod,” based on the Douglas Coupland novel of the same name. The role garnered him a Leo nomination in 2008. After two seasons as a series regular on the CTV hit series “Dan for Mayor,” he then landed the role of Eric Blake on HBO Canada's Gemini Award winning series “Less Than Kind,” for which he received a Canadian Screen Award nomination.
Ayres has appeared in more than 40 television series and made-for-television movies, including the Hallmark Channel original movie “Love by Chance.” His other credits include various guest star and recurring roles on SyFy’s “Battlestar Galactica,” “Bitten” and “Lost Girl,” CW’s “The Vampire Diaries,” CBS’s “Flashpoint,” ABC’s “Combat Hospital,” “Diamonds” and “Impact,” and WB’s “Smallville.”
During his early 20s, Ayres studied at The Lyric School of Acting under the direct mentorship of studio head Michele Lonsdale Smith. He later collaborated with her as a performer in a wide range of theatrical productions, including multiple mountings of Eric Bogosian’s one-man play Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, Judith Thompson’s Lion in the Streets and August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Ayres became one of Vancouver’s most in-demand stage actors and was approached to originate the role of Tench in the world premiere of Raul Inglis’s In the Eyes of God, and again in Inglis’s next original play, Surveillance.
