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Ben Bass

Ben Bass is an American-Canadian actor whose work stretches across television, film and the stage. Born in Baltimore on August 14, 1968, he moved with his family to Vancouver at the age of seven. His screen career began with an appearance on 21 Jump Street, while his early stage work included Angry Housewives, which earned him a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award nomination for best supporting actor. Bass also originated the role of a young Elvis Presley in Are You Lonesome Tonight at the Charlottetown Festival in Prince Edward Island. He later studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. That theatrical background has remained a steady part of his career, whether playing Christian in Cyrano de Bergerac and taking the lead in In the Ring at the Stratford Festival, or appearing as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew at Nova Scotia's Atlantic Theatre Festival. On television, Bass found a particularly distinctive role in Forever Knight as Javier Vachon, a 16th-century Spanish vampire. The part followed a run of guest appearances after his return to Canada and made good use of an actor comfortable with both heightened material and character-driven drama. He later played a lead character in the third season of The Eleventh Hour, receiving a Gemini Award nomination for the role. A second Gemini nomination followed for the miniseries Would Be Kings. Bass became especially familiar to television audiences as Sam Swarek in Rookie Blue, a performance that brought Canadian Screen Award nominations in 2014 and 2016. His film credits include A Cool, Dry Place, Bride of Chucky and The 6th Day. Taken together, Bass's roles show a career built less around one fixed screen identity than an ability to move between grounded contemporary characters, genre storytelling and classical theatre.