Only So Many Canadian Actors

""from How to be Indie to Degrassi.. I just can't get rid of Dylan Everett""

- Melinda Shankar, official Facebook page.

To the outside viewer (usually American), after you start watching a few Canadian-made shows, you start to notice something. Something weird. Oh sure, Hey, It's That Guy! is totally normal... but it starts getting odd when you're watching Canadian TV, and you start shouting "Hey! It's that Guy!"... every five minutes, at every actor.

That's where this trope comes in.

You see, in Canada, the government offers significant tax breaks and direct subsidies to Canadian-made TV shows, in exchange enforcing a "Canadian actors only" policy for the majority of roles. But there are only so many actors in Canada, especially young actors. The country already has a relatively small population to begin with (about 40 million as of 2023, roughly the same as Tokyo or California), and when you narrow the actors down to a specific age group (between 15 and 30, like most of the ones below), and then combine that with the fact that Canada has become a very popular shooting location for American producers on a tight budget, you're only left with a tiny handful of actors. Additionally, most of these actors often stay in Canada for the rest of their careers (though not always by choice). That said, some have managed to break out it; notably, Michael J. Fox, Eugene Levy, Mike Myers, Elliot Page, Anna Paquin, Dan Aykroyd, and Aubrey Graham.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing — if anything, it becomes enjoyable to the viewer, and because of the frequent recurrence of these actors, there often isn't much Role Association.

We only picked Canada as an example because that's where a rather large chunk of tropers are from. But this phenomenon can be found in any country with a small enough dramatic community, where actors are either encouraged to stay because of heavy art subsidies or are forced to stay because of linguistic incompatibility with countries around them. You can also notice this in the some of the more niche branches (relative to film and TV anyways) of dramatic arts, there are so many Mummers dancers or Peking opera singers to go around.

Oddly enough, the people associated with this trope rarely, if ever, tend to come into contact with actors from The Ocean Group or Nelvana. Except with Franklin and Jane and the Dragon.

Actors Commonly Associated With This

 * Raymond Ablack
 * Charlotte Arnold
 * Angela Asher
 * Lawrence Bayne
 * Luke Bilyk
 * Valerie Boyle
 * John Bregar
 * Paula Brancati
 * Munro Chambers
 * Daniel Clarke (Notably born in the U.S.; moved to Canada when he was young, then back to America after leaving Degrassi)
 * Robert Clarke (younger brother of above)
 * Lauren Collins
 * Ryan Cooley
 * Ellen David
 * Jake Epstein
 * Stacey Farber
 * Aubrey "Drake" Graham
 * Graham Greene (who gets many of the "First Nations" roles)
 * Alex House
 * Ricardo Hoyos
 * Justin Kelly (whose Degrassi character had to be renamed Jake instead of Noah, since he had already played a character named Noah alongside Munro Chambers in The Latest Buzz.)
 * Shane Kippel
 * Cory Lee
 * Ashley Leggat
 * Miriam Macdonald
 * Jonathan Mallen
 * Blu Mankuma (so astonishingly ubiquitous throughout the 90's that a Canadian version of the Bacon game could well have been called "one degree of Blu Mankuma". Did quite a bit of voice acting too, contrary to the norm for this trope.)
 * Pat Mastroianni
 * Tony Munch
 * Peter Outerbridge
 * Aislinn Paul
 * Elliot Page
 * John Ralston
 * Noah Reid (has dabbled quite a bit in voice acting; specifically, he voiced the title character in Franklin until he was 17, among several other works).
 * Adamo Ruggerio
 * A.J. Saudin
 * Michael Seater (probably the most well known person on this list not to really break out of the Canadian film industry)
 * Melinda Shankar
 * Shadia Simmons
 * Tyler Stentiford
 * Joy Tanner
 * Kate Todd
 * Jordan Todosey
 * Kit Weyman

Media Commonly Associated With This

 * 18 to Life
 * Black Hole High a.k.a. Strange Days At Blake Holsey High
 * Charlie Bartlett
 * Degrassi: Arguably the central nexus and certainly the epitome of the trope.
 * The Famous Jett Jackson
 * Flashpoint
 * Franklin
 * Instant Star
 * I Was a Sixth Grade Alien
 * The Latest Buzz
 * Life with Derek
 * Jane and the Dragon
 * Murdoch Mysteries
 * Naturally, Sadie
 * Nonsense Revolution
 * Radio Free Roscoe
 * Regenesis
 * The Safety of Objects
 * The Zack Files