Like every hard-working character actor, Christopher Heyerdahl has worn many faces. Yet, he probably goes unrecognized by most people on the streets of Vancouver, Montreal or Toronto, where he often plies his trade. Heyerdahl was born in Vancouver and that city has been a particularly good base for him. As Hollywood North, it has provided Heyerdahl with opportunities for roles in several films and television series produced by American studios, including Smallville, Psych, Masters of Horror, Jeremiah, Andromeda, 21 Jump Street, The Dead Zone, The Collector, Blade: Trinity and The Chronicles of Riddick. Heyerdahl has also appeared in Stargate SG-1 and had two recurring roles on Stargate Atlantis. In one of those roles he plays a Wraith named Todd, who has become one of the series' most popular returning characters. The role might have made Heyerdahl's face more familiar, except that he is concealed under the prosthetics that make the Wraith one of the scariest (and ugliest) alien races on television.

It is thanks to his work with Stargate regulars Amanda Tapping, Martin Wood and Damian Kindler, however, that Heyerdahl will play a prominent role in the upcoming series Sanctuary. Sanctuary is bucking the trend of Vancouver-shot shows and being exported down to the United States. It stars Tapping as monster-hunter Dr. Helen Magnus, who has a long and turbulent association with Heyerdahl's character, Montague John Druitt. Druitt is ostensibly the series' chief villain. Sanctuary was created by Kindler and first saw life as an eight-webisode Internet series directed by Martin Wood (who will be interviewed shortly on CinemaSpy). CinemaSpy recently caught up with Heyerdahl as filming of the first season came to an end. In the interview he discusses Sanctuary, the appeal of fantasy roles and his commitment to Canadian film and television.

CinemaSpy: How did you get into acting in the first place?

Christopher Heyerdahl: Well that's always a funny thing. I mean, as kids you're always goofing off and acting. How I got into doing it professionally is kind of a...I think I was pushed into it a little bit, strangely enough. I was doing the high school thing and the elementary school thing. And then towards the end of my high school education there was a bunch of people that came in to see the show that we were doing in my last year at high school. They were doing the same show in a professional show and they asked me if I wanted to be a part of it. And from that the people that had seen me there said, "Oh you shouldn't go into..." because I wanted to be a psychologist and I thought I was going to be getting into at least another six years of education. I realized that I ended up actually getting into a lifetime of education by doing acting. They suggested going to theater school and doing all these things that I had no idea about at that age, and I thought I'd give it a shot. It sounded like a good time and it was probably something I wouldn't give up and move on to something else. And it just took hold of me like nothing else. So strangely enough it was outside influence that drew me away from higher education. [laughs] And I've really never looked back. I've been really lucky with my career as being a working actor.

CinemaSpy: How did you get the part of John Druitt in Sanctuary?

Christopher Heyerdahl: Well, that's a good question. I was shown the script [and they said,] "Here, take a look at this Chris and just have a good read. It's a great script." And I looked at it. I fell absolutely in love with this character of Montague John Druitt. Just the tragic essence of the character was very attractive to me and I thought, 'Oh, if anybody else gets this part I'm just gonna...now maybe I'll become the murderer.' And I was given a call from Martin Wood about a half an hour before I had to actually speak. He said, "Christopher, we're doing this reading and I'd love you to come and read for us around the table. We're reading that script.' And I said, "OK, great." And so I jump on my bike and head out there and I arrive there about a half hour late, and they're already into the reading. I sit down and along comes Druitt and I start reading. I had such a wonderful time reading that. And at the end of it they just pulled me aside and said, "It's yours." I had no idea it was an audition or anything like that. I just was coming in for a reading for the producers and director and all the creatives and I ended up getting the part. So it was a surprise. [laughs] A very pleasant surprise.

CinemaSpy: You must have been delighted then when the show got picked up as a 13-part series after the webisodes.

Christopher Heyerdahl: Well that was great. It was really down to the wire. We had no idea if it was going to continue on. When you're breaking new ground like we're doing on this show, you never know how it's going to turn out, more than the average show. I mean, so few things, when they're brought into development, so few actually make it to any kind of fruition, where anybody's actually going to see them. So when we had the great fortune of doing the webisodes and seeing how that went — it was a huge success — and then always wanting to, of course, bring it to television as an additional medium. Having it come through where we could actually see a full arc. We had to come up with a full arc for Episodes 1 to 13. How were we then going to bring the webisodes into that? Were we going to take off from where the webisodes left off? Were we going to incorporate them? How was this all going to happen? It was this huge, huge buzz and then when we got the word that we could go ahead, it was full speed. It was incredibly exciting. And we are now in our last week, or last few days, of production before we finish our thirteenth episode and it's been an amazing ride. And everyone has stayed on board from Day One to...well, we haven't reached our final day, but everyone's still as excited as they were on Day One and it's a wonderful thing to be a part of.