Hi.Much like Hayden Christensen tried to shake the whole Vader thing by taking on the drama Shattered Glass, Shawn Ashmore is seeking to shed his image as pretty young mutant (which appearances on Smallville probably didn’t help). 

Ashmore will star in an indie titled 3 Needles, an AIDS drama broken up into three segments that look at the epidemic in different cultures.  Ashmore steps into a role originally intended for Underworld werevamp Scott Speedman, playing a mediocre porn actor who covers up his HIV by passing off his elderly father’s blood as his own during monthly testing.  The other portions of the film from writer/director Thom Matthews (The Wild Dogs) are set in Africa and China.  The movie is currently shooting with a cast that includes Lucy Liu, Sarah Polley, Chloe Sevigny, Stockard Channing and Sandra Oh, who always makes me think of Drew from Office Space. 

The wall-freezing actor will next be seen with the delectable Kristin Kreuk in Sci-Fi Channel’s miniseries Earthsea, and with Nick Cannon in the 21 Jump Street-esque high-school action flick Underclassmen.  Ashmore has also been linked to the Jimmy Olsen role in Bryan Singer’s Superman, a film I continue to categorize as theoretical.