Niall Matter

Niall Matter (born October 20, 1980) is a Canadian-American actor.

Following recovery from a serious accident sustained while working on an oil rig, Matter chose to pursue a full-time acting career.

On the recommendation of a school teacher, he enrolled in drama classes at age thirteen, going on to win the Best Actor prize at a provincial drama championship in 1999.

However, after getting himself in trouble at age 17, his parents sent him for a three-month stint on the oil rigs to work with his grandfather.

He has acknowledged that it was this experience that helped him to focus on his studies and pass his high school exams.

He continued to work on the oil rigs alongside his grandfather and brother Trevor until the age of 25, while simultaneously moving to Vancouver and attending Vancouver Film School in pursuit of his long-term goal of an acting career.

At the age of 25 Matter had a serious accident while working on the oil rigs, where he was nearly crushed inside the cab of a 17-ton drilling rig.

His quad muscle had been detached from his femur, and he nearly lost his right leg.

It took six months for him to be fully rehabilitated, having to go through extensive physiotherapy to fully regain his ability to walk.

On returning to the oil rigs, he witnessed another accident in which a man lost both his legs.

This convinced him that it was time to move on, so he quit, returning to Vancouver, where he lied his way into a bartending job before landing his first acting role.

He received his first significant break in 2007, with a main role in teen drama The Best Years.

Later in the same year, he joined the cast of Eureka as bad-boy genius Zane Donovan.

Matter landed his first professional acting job in 2007 playing the lead role of bait shop owner Josh Riley in the Syfy original film Loch Ness Terror, (broadcast as Beyond Loch Ness), which also starred Brian Krause and Don S. Davis.

While filming Loch Ness he sent an audition tape to the producers of The Best Years which led to him gaining the main cast role of bartender, and cocaine addict, Trent Hamilton in the series's first season.

He went on to play the role of USAF airman Lieutenant Kemp in a two-episode guest spot on the Syfy television series Stargate Atlantis.

He subsequently auditioned for the Syfy series Eureka, for what he understood was a one-episode guest star role.

By his own admission, he took risks in the audition, playing the character as more flirtatious than he was written.

The risks paid off, and he was cast in the role of bad boy genius Zane Donovan, first appearing in the season two episode "E=MC...?".

The character would go on to develop a romantic relationship with the town's Deputy Sheriff Jo Lupo played by Erica Cerra.

His role was recurring throughout seasons two and three.

Season four saw a soft reboot of the show - following a time-traveling incident, the characters return to an alternate timeline, with character dynamics and relationships shifting.

This led to Matter's role as Zane being expanded as he became part of the main cast, which continued through to the show's fifth and final season.

During this time, he also had guest roles on Warehouse 13, portraying one half of a married couple alongside Eureka castmate Cerra and on NBC's Fear Itself, playing a lovelorn zombie.

In 2009 he had a small supporting role in Zack Snyder's film Watchmen.

In 2009/2010, Matter appeared as a recurring guest star on The CW shows Melrose Place (as record producer Rick) and 90210 as Greg, a teacher and subsequent love interest to Erin Silver.

In 2009, Matter played a small role in Zack Snyder's Watchmen film, portraying one of the Minute Men, Byron Lewis/Mothman.

He also appeared in the short film accompanying the 'ultimate cut' DVD release of the film entitled Under the Hood, a faux documentary on the Minute Men.

He went on to star as Evan Cross in the short-lived 2012 series Primeval: New World.

His career subsequently moved away from science fiction, seeing him star in several television movies, as well as joining Canadian series such as Remedy, Arctic Air and When Calls the Heart.

Born in Edmonton, Alberta, of Irish and Russian descent, Matter grew up on his parents' dairy farm.

He is a third-generation oil rigger, having worked on the oil rigs in Northern Alberta for eight years.

From 2012 to 2013, Matter played the lead character of Evan Cross, a millionaire inventor searching for anomalies following the brutal killing of his wife by an Albertosaurus, in Space's science fiction series Primeval: New World, a spin-off of the British series Primeval.

In 2013, this role earned him a Constellation Award in the Best Male Performance in a Science Fiction Television Episode category, for his performance in the episode "Truth".

He was also nominated for a Leo Award in the Best Lead Performance by a Male in a Dramatic Series category, for the same episode.

Due to low ratings, the series was not renewed for a second season.

In March 2014, Deadline Hollywood announced that he had landed the role of Lieutenant Graden Hales in the TNT commissioned pilot of Marcia Clark's Guilt by Association alongside Julia Stiles, which TNT ultimately declined to pick up.

He subsequently appeared in guest roles in various American and Canadian series.

In CTV's Motive he played a man driven to murder in revenge for his sister's death; in the short-lived NBC series Constantine he played a father struggling to deal with the supernatural and in the TNT police procedural Rizzoli and Isles he portrayed a Detective turned murderer.

He also had a recurring role in the third season of the CBC series Arctic Air as Tag Cummins, the love interest of the series female protagonist, Krista Ivarson, portrayed by Pascale Hutton.