Mike Dopud is a familiar face in the world of science fiction film and television, but if his life were a movie, Netflix would probably categorize it as Action-Adventure Sci-fi Dramedy.
The veteran Vancouver actor is a former CFLer and stunt artist (there’s the Action) who travels around the world portraying an array of characters, many within the science fiction sphere (there’s the Adventure and Sci-fi).
And the Dramedy? Well, that’s the rhythm of most lives, and Dopud’s life – as he recently described it over coffee in a South Granville café – has unfolded to a steady, sometimes syncopated, beat.
Dopud is currently shooting a role in Tomboy, A Revenger’s Tale with Sigourney Weaver and Michelle Rodriguez (he can’t disclose too much about the role, but reveals that he plays a nurse who works closely with Weaver’s doctor character).
He can also be seen in The Christmas Truce – a holiday MOW about those few days in World War One when the conflict on the Western Front took a brief but welcome hiatus.
In 2016, Dopud will grace the big screen in a very different kind of film: Virtual Revolution, a noir take on virtual reality in which Dopud stars as an agent on the hunt for cyber-terrorists.
It’s a sweet moment in an evolving career that began in a darkened theatre years ago, when a pre-pubescent Dopud took in a screening of the original Mad Max.
“The post-apocalyptic world [of Mad Max] was dirty and grungy and crazy, and it resonated for me for whatever reason,” says Dopud. “I was convinced I was going to be in the movies. I wanted to be a part of this.”
But he was growing up in Montreal’s West Island, where “nobody was an actor, and so I always steered clear of acting, just because I didn’t know anything about it.”
Dopud loved sports, and he was good at quite a few of them, so even though he spent his Friday nights watching films like Rocky and Escape from New York, he made athletics his top priority.
He played football for Southern Illinois University, and was drafted by the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
“That was a dream come true,” says Dopud. “I made it – and then I got hurt.”
Next there was hockey, and another injury, and then a move west to make a go of it in the corporate world.
Increasingly, though, Dopud met people in the entertainment industry who thought he could succeed in film and TV, both as a stunt artist and as an actor. Finally, after yet another such conversation, he took action.
“I literally went the next day to the union offices, and said, ‘Hi, I want to be an actor, what do I need to do, do I need an agent, do I need headshots?’” Dopud laughs. “They all laughed at me, literally.”
But Dopud persevered. He grins widely when he recalls one of his first times on set.
“On The X-Files, they asked me to pick up David Duchovny, and say, ‘1, 2, 3,’” says Dopud.
He picked up Duchovny, counted to three, and moved him as directed – and in that moment, he experienced a familiar feeling.
“That rush of ‘Action!’ and ‘Rolling!’ and nerves and adrenaline, it was the closest thing to sports that I could sense,” says Dopud, who now divides his time between LA and Vancouver. “I found my calling.”
Although he maintains close ties with the stunt world, today, he’s pretty much exclusively an actor. His credit list reads like a recent history of the Vancouver sci-fi scene: Continuum; Battlestar Galactica; numerous Stargate series (as well as recurring roles on non sci-fi fare like Arctic Air, Strange Empire, and Cedar Cove).
Dopud attributes the abundance of sci-fi roles in his filmography to Vancouver’s longtime status as a sci-fi capital, and says that he approaches every role from the same place.
“I believe that acting is based on honesty, and telling a story,” says Dopud. “If that means that I’m telling a story on a ship and I’m running from aliens, or in front of a beautiful woman, or in front of a guy I’m about to rob a bank with, I’m still, at the end of the day, a character, and I’ve got to be honest.”
“The sci-fi fans have been great to me,” he adds. “They follow my career. I’ve been lucky. They seem to like my work, which is really cool.”
It’s how he ended up starring in Virtual Revolution: the director was a fan of Dopud’s work in Stargate, and invited him to be a part of his feature film directorial debut.
Dopud describes Virtual Revolution as a mix of Blade Runner and Highlander.
“There’s sword fighting, and most of the sword fighting is in the virtual world, and the other dark and gritty stuff is in the present,” says Dopud. “I just love that concept.”
In Virtual Revolution – which shot in Paris earlier this year – Dopud is Nash, a shadow agent “hired by corporations and the government to track down terrorists that are either in the real world or the virtual world that are trying to affect the virtual reality in those worlds, either to destroy them or manipulate them.”
Dopud is happy with his life in sci-fi (he’s heading to Toronto to shoot a four-episode arc on Dark Matter), but he’s always eager to explore different genres.
“I’ve played a lot of dark characters, or evil characters, and a lot of people see you as that, and it’s hard to change perceptions,” says Dopud. “I’d love to try romantic comedy, or do a sitcom.”
The Christmas Truce premieres on Showcase on Dec. 17.
