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 Alan Gilsenan’s Unless, which premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. On the small screen he starred as Dr. Zachary Miller in the highly acclaimed, CTV/NBC medical drama Saving Hope, which ran for five seasons. Ayres has recently been seen in a recurring role on Detention Adventure and has had guest starring roles on The Good Doctor and The CW series Burden of Truth, and in Hallmark Channel’s Falling for Vermont.
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 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, The CW’s The Vampire Diaries, CBS’ Flashpoint, ABC’s Combat Hospital, Diamonds and Impact, and The WB’s Smallville. Most recently for Hallmark Channel, Ayres starred in Love & Jane and Field Day as well as Miracle in Bethlehem, PA, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ top-rated movie of 2023 and True Justice: Family Ties.
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’ In the Eyes of God, and again in Inglis’ next original play, Surveillance.