Jay Ryan

The surname that didn't fit on the red carpet

Jay Ryan is not the typical polished heartthrob who desperately seeks the camera. He was born in Auckland in 1981 and spent his first professional years under the name Jay Bunyan. That surname didn't last long.

The industry suggested a radical change because Bunyan sounded too much like a bunion in English. He accepted the stage name Jay Ryan to avoid cruel jokes and began working at the Australian soap opera factory.

In 2002, he joined the cast of Neighbours to play Jack Scully. He stayed for three years, filming scenes at a frantic pace. That fast-paced TV school gave him the experience he needed, but it also left him with a daytime soap actor label that was hard to shake off.

And it worked.

But the New Zealand actor wanted more than circular plots and cheap-script romances. He decided to move to Los Angeles to try his luck in a market that doesn't forgive obvious mistakes. Before landing his first major role in the United States, he had to deal with dozens of rejections in empty casting rooms.

The prestige of working with Jane Campion

His luck changed in 2013 when Jane Campion took notice of him. The director was looking for a face that conveyed a somewhat broken masculinity for the series Top of the Lake. Ryan played Mark Mitcham in a production that earned praise from international critics.

That role broke the stereotype of the commercial television actor and opened the door to projects with greater dramatic weight. He worked alongside Elisabeth Moss in a suffocating atmosphere that had nothing to do with his beginnings in Melbourne.

Between 2012 and 2016, he starred in Beauty & the Beast for the CW network. There were 70 episodes in which he carried the weight of a fantasy genre production with a very vocal fan base. The show's followers called themselves Beasties, and they generated so much online buzz that the series stayed alive longer than expected.

Prestige doesn't always pay the bills.

In 2017, he joined the cast of Mary Kills People. He played a detective investigating a doctor who performed illegal euthanasia. It was a three-season Canadian series that allowed him to explore a much drier, more direct tone.

The physical transformation for Derry

His big leap into major studio films came in 2019. He was cast as the adult version of Ben Hanscom in It Chapter Two. The choice surprised many, because the child version of the character was an overweight boy and Ryan had an imposing physique.

He had to share the set with Jessica Chastain and Bill Hader in a production that grossed more than 470 million dollars worldwide. The film demanded considerable physical effort during night shoots on Canadian locations.

But box office success never caused him to lose his way or drift away from his Oceania roots. Whenever he can, he returns to New Zealand to take part in local projects that have smaller budgets but more soul.

In 2021, he got involved in the dark comedy Creamerie. It was a dystopian story in which a virus had wiped out nearly all the men on the planet. He played one of the few survivors in a plot that mixed acid humor with social criticism.

In 2023, he starred in The Gone. It is a crime drama shot among the green landscapes of Ireland and the wild nature of New Zealand. The production had a tight budget and focused on the disappearance of a young couple of tourists from Dublin.

The series premiered with six episodes, each 50 minutes long.