Niall Matter

An oil rig, not a drama school, is what pushed Niall Matter into acting. He was working the rigs when a serious accident ended that line of work, and he turned to performing full time. The break came in 2007 with a main role in the teen drama The Best Years, and later that year with the part people still know him for: Zane Donovan, the delinquent genius on Eureka.

Zane is a useful role to be good at. He has to be charming enough that the town tolerates him and irritating enough that the joke keeps working, and Matter plays him with a lightness most of his later work has not required. Science fiction kept him busy for a while: Mothman in the Watchmen companion piece Under the Hood, a small part in the feature itself, which is not among the credits listed here, Eddie in Fear Itself, Rick Paxton on the Melrose Place revival, Sapir in The Predator, and Evan Cross in Primeval: New World.

Then the career changed lanes entirely. He became a fixture of the North American television movie, most visibly as Nick Miller across the Aurora Teagarden mysteries and as the male lead in a stack of Christmas films. Snobbery about that work is cheap. It is a genre with real demands, most of them around playing decency without becoming dull, and he is one of the reliable people in it.

The dramatic credits are still there when he wants them, including Dr. Peter Cutler on Remedy and Darrell on Constantine.