He’s not a cop, far from it, but Michael Cram – who you could just as easily envision as the corny dad in a cereal commercial or the deranged serial killer in an MOW – has played one on TV so many times over in his 18-year acting career he’s lost count.

Of course, it’s his supporting lead role as special agent Kevin Wordsworth on the hit CTV/CBS series Flashpoint he prefers to talk about, despite my pressing him for details on his near-nude scene as a cop on a massage table in the 2002 feature Rub & Tug or his guest spot as a cop on The X-Files during a five-year stint in Vancouver in the mid-’90s.

While indeed it is his role on Flashpoint – now into its third season – that’s garnering this tall, slight and classically handsome musician-turned-actor a place in the spotlight, his backstories of a struggling actor are hard to pass up.

I’m particularly amused by his description of a job he took in his early days as a disembodied head at a John Deere company party.

I was to keep my head propped up in a cutout hole in a table, that was literally cutting into my neck, where I was surrounded by rancid meat and other rotten, disgusting, old food for two hours. I didn’t even have a chair to sit on (he demonstrates the lunge position he stood in under the table), and it was my job to hurl insults at the guests, who in turn would be incited to throw spoiled squash and cold cuts at my face.’ All for $50.

‘Hey, I had to take the job, it was within my creative field,’ says the Carleton Unversity economics graduate, who first learned to act at the William Davis Centre for Actors’ Study in Toronto.

As we sit sipping lattes at a midtown coffee shop in Toronto, Mike reveals more and more of his charmingly nervous and self-deprecating side. In his mild-mannered tone, he recounts what seems like a lifetime of near hits and misses that have led him to his current spot on a hit network series, where he most certainly has a chair to sit on and where nobody throws salami at him.

When he’s not working 16-hour days for months at a time, clad in heavy police armor, this Cornwall, ON-born actor busies himself working on his music and auditioning for parts he says are a direct result of his plum role on Flashpoint. In the past month alone, he’s auditioned for three big-budget international films. (He’s too superstitious to name names.)

Meantime, he’s writing and recording music, inspired by favorites like David Bowie and The Velvet Underground. Indie music lovers of the ’80s may even remember Mike from his Ottawa-based bands Cold House and Amsterdam.

If Hugh Dillon, formerly of The Headstones, can release a solo album between shooting Durham County and Flashpoint, Mike thinks he could at least give it a go in his downtime.

He says he’s always inspired by the successes, and even failures, of the acting community around him.

‘If they’ve remained working in Canada, they’re roughing it, chasing it… They have perseverance, resilience and amazing survival skills. That’s what it takes. That’s what keeps me going.’

Agent/Manager: Colleen A. Loucks, LeFeaver Talent Management