Callum Blue
Callum Blue is an actor, born 1977.
A grim reaper, a Tudor courtier and a Kryptonian villain: the three roles Callum Blue is remembered for have almost nothing in common except that he is English in all of them and American television paid for all of them.
He started at home, with the British teen series As If in 2001, then crossed over quickly. Mason in Showtime's Dead Like Me is the part that built the following, a dissolute English reaper who is the funniest and least reliable person in every scene he is in. He reprised it in the film Dead Like Me: Life After Death. Andrew Jacoby in The Princess Diaries 2 came in between, a studio job he plays with more wit than the film deserved.
Then a run of good cable work: Anthony Knivert in The Tudors, Alex in Secret Diary of a Call Girl opposite Billie Piper, and Zod in Smallville, a role that requires an actor to be menacing in a show aimed at teenagers and not be laughed at.
Since then the record has cooled into genre and television movies: Sanctuary, Richard in Colombiana, the genre pictures Red Sands and Fractured, the faith drama Saul: The Journey to Damascus, the romance Love Blossoms. It is a working actor's second act rather than a decline, but the parts stopped being written as well as Mason was.
Movies (10)
TV (7)
Where to start with Callum Blue
Dead Like Me is the reason to be here. Mason is a comic creation rather than a role: a shambolic, permanently unreliable Englishman in a show about the newly departed taking jobs as reapers, and Blue plays him with a wounded quality the writing does not always supply.
The Tudors is the best-looking thing on his record and gives him a courtier with something to do at court. Smallville is the pop-culture credit, and the honest verdict is that he is better than the version of Zod he was handed. Secret Diary of a Call Girl is worth an episode or two for his scenes with Billie Piper.
Approach Dead Like Me: Life After Death with low expectations, since the film cannot recover the show's tone. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement and Colombiana are the mainstream sightings, both minor.