As far back as he can remember, Ryan has always enjoyed entertaining people. "I've just always liked to perfom from day one," he says.
Ryan began his career in show business by enrolling in dance classes while he was still in grade school. With his enthusiasm and talent, Ryan easily won lots of first-place trophies at dance competitions.
When he wasn't busy rehearsing for dance competitions, Ryan was performing with his sister, a gifted vocalist and guitarist. The two sang together at local fashion shows, charity benefits, weddings and other special occassions. Ryan regularly stole the spotlight from his sister with special solo performances that included serenading brides with romantic tunes such as "Puppy Love" and "When a Man Loves a Woman."
By the time he was 12, Ryan decided to take his career as an entertainer to the next level. He wanted to get involved in professional show business, but his mom was nervous about letting him do so at such a tender age. "She didn't want it to have any bad effects on me-she didn't want me to change," Ryan explains to BOP and BB. However, knowing how much entertaining meant to Ryan, his mom eventually agreed to let him give it a shot.
Soon after Ryan got the green light to pursue a show-biz career, Ryan signed with an agent, who sent him on an audition for the Disney Channel TV series The Mickey MOuse Club. The multi-talented cutie beat out 17,000 other kids vying for the role of a singing, dancing Mouseketeer-a pretty impressive feat when you consider that it was Ryan's very first audition! Before he could say "Mickey Mouse," Ryan and his mom were flying to Orlando, Florida, where MMC was taped.
Career
Ryan spent the following two years co-starring on MMC. When the series ended in 1995, he returned home to Canada and continued his career by guest-starring on a string of TV series, including Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Disney's Flash Forward and Road to Avonlea and Fox's Goosebumps. He also popped up on TV with a recrring role on the Canadian TV series The Adventures of Shirley Holmes: Detective, Kung Fu the Legend Continues, and a co-starring role on the UPN series Breaker High, which aired from fall 1997 to fall 1998.
In 1996, Ryan made the leap from the TV screen to the silver screen when he co-starred in the feature film Frankenstein and Me. Two years later his career shifed into high gear when he appeared in his second film, 1998's Nothing Too Good For a Cowboy, and nabbed the much-coveted lead role in the Fox Kids Network's Saturday morning TV series Young Hercules!
These days, Ryan spends most of his time in Auckland, New Zealand, where Young Hercules is filmed. Although he sometimes misses his native Canada while he's living on this small island country in the South Pacific Ocean, he's pretty happy with the change of scenery. "I love it down here," he raves. "It's so beautiful. It's the perfect place to be!"
When he isn't checking out the sites around New Zealand, this quiet, down-to-earth guy is most likely kicking back to jazz music, strumming his guitar, reaking books or heading for the closest movie theater. A serious movie buff, Ryan loves to spend his free time watching movies, especially those starring his favorite actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Christopher Walken, Benicio Del Toro, and Dennis Hopper.
As for girls, Ryan says he's attracted to "someone who is funny and just happy. She has to be sensitive and caring. It doesn't matter if she's pretty-she just has to care about people."
