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Aaron Stanford

Aaron Stanford has built a career around characters who rarely seem entirely settled, moving comfortably between independent films, comic-book blockbusters and long-running television roles. Born on December 27, 1976, in Westford, Massachusetts, he first encountered acting at Westford Academy. After initially attending SUNY Purchase, he transferred to Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts and graduated magna cum laude in 2000. His first major film role arrived with Tadpole in 2002. Stanford played Oscar Grubman, a precocious 15-year-old infatuated with his stepmother, portrayed by Sigourney Weaver. The performance earned him a Golden Satellite Award nomination and quickly established his ability to handle a complicated lead without sanding away the character’s awkward edges. That role also caught the attention of director Bryan Singer, who cast Stanford as Pyro in X2. Stanford returned as the fire-wielding mutant in X-Men: The Last Stand, giving him an early place in the modern wave of superhero films. Between those appearances, he played Anthony LaPaglia’s son in Winter Solstice, and in 2006 he moved from the brutal survival horror of The Hills Have Eyes to the New Hampshire comedy Live Free or Die, where he played wannabe criminal John Rudgate. Television has given Stanford room to stay with characters for longer stretches. He joined Nikita as Birkhoff in 2010, then took the lead as James Cole in Syfy’s television adaptation of 12 Monkeys, which premiered in 2015. He later appeared in Fear the Walking Dead as the recurring character Jim. His work has also extended to games, including voicing Pvt. Polonsky in Call of Duty: World at War. In 2024, Stanford returned to Pyro for Deadpool & Wolverine. More than two decades after X2, the appearance brought one of his best-known roles back into view—and finally put Pyro in a costume drawn more directly from the comics.