Martin Cummins may play a tough guy on FOX’s Friday-night SF drama Dark Angel, but don’t expect him to fess up to being one in real life. “Oh, I don’t know if I’d say that,” he says. “I know tough guys.” But, on balance, has he beaten people up more than people have beaten him up? “Well, yeah, I suppose. That’s probably the case. That’s not an angle I’d like to start sharing with my kid. I know tough guys. I know a lot of guys that I wouldn’t dare take a swing at. They’re good buddies of mine, so thankfully, I don’t have to.”
On Dark Angel, Cummins—whose last regular series job was on the Showtime/syndicated/Sci Fi Channel show Poltergeist: The Legacy (as a tough guy)—plays Ames White, a government agent hot on the trail of escaped human/animal hybrids, or “transgenics” in a near-future Seattle. Chief among his targets is Max (Jessica Alba), a lissome superwoman on a mission to rescue her fellow transgenics and foil the nefarious plans of the evil government project called Manticore.
In describing the character early in the season, Dark Angel executive producer Rene Echevarria said, “He seems to have a visceral hatred for these transgenics. He is there to clean up the mess with extreme prejudice. He seems to have a personal vendetta. He thinks these are freaks, and they are dangerous, and they must be found and eliminated. I was talking to Martin, and he’s got this idea that, at the same time, White’s probably a family man and goes to church on Sunday and plays golf, and is convinced of the righteousness of his ways,” says Cummins, “He’s one of these guys who’s fallen off the truck in the ‘50s and blindly believes what he’s been told by his government. If they’ve told him that, it must be true, so he goes about his business. He doesn’t really see them, in that sense, as human beings. He sees them as an experiment that’s gone wrong, so he deals with them as such.” Along the way, White wreaks plenty of havoc himself. “Oh, man, I’m racking up a body count,” says Cummins. “I’m not telling people to kill people, I’m killing them myself. It’s ugly. He’s a hands-on guy. I’ve been responsible for several deaths at this point. I’m into double digits.”
Expect revelations about White’s background during original episodes airing in January. A native of Vancouver, Canada, where the show is filmed, the 32-year-old Cummins is happy to be able to work at home and spend time with his 5-year-old son. In general, he’s just happy to be around, considering he had some shaky years in his youth. Those years are chronicled in We All Fall Down, an independent 2000 film that Cummins directed and co-wrote (with Richard C. Burton). In addition, Cummins co-stars as painter Kris, the drug-abusing best friend of the main character, Mike (Darcy Belsher). Mike’s grief over the death of his mother has also led him onto a self-destructive path of drug abuse. Apparently, Mike’s troubles are based at least in part on Cummins’s own experiences on the mean streets of the British Columbia city.
“I had a bad run there,” he says. “My mom passed when I was 18. She was ill with cancer for several years before she died. I had difficulties with my dad, so I found myself on the downtown East Side here in Vancouver for a number of years. That’s what the film’s about, that time period in my life and the people in it. The only thing I’ve got left from that time period is cigarettes, and I’ve got to get rid of those soon. My kid keeps telling me so.” Cummins feels fortunate to have survived intact. “I don’t know how I didn’t get my nose broken,” he says, “from the number of times I got punched. I got knocked out by a guy with a two-by-four once, and I didn’t even end up with a concussion, so that wasn’t a bad thing. That’s a lot of years behind me now. A lot of people don’t get out of that neighborhood alive. I know a lot of guys personally who didn’t.”
Luckily for Cummins, he had people outside the neighborhood who cared about him, especially his long-suffering agent. “It’s a helluva lot easier on my agent now than having to come hunt me down and find out where the hell I was. He’s happy about it too. He was real good to me. He paid a lot of bills, took responsibility for what the hell was going on with me, when I was having a difficult time of it. I wouldn’t change anything, including my mother’s death, with how things have gone in my life, because I’m happy with the way things are now. If I changed any of that, maybe things wouldn’t be the way they are now. I have a wonderful child, and I’ve got a good life. I’ve got no reason to complain. Things could be a helluva lot worse.”
In the meantime, Cummins works hard, buys real estate with his money and works on outside movie projects. And he doesn’t mind a bit that the part of Ames White puts him in a suit and tie. “I like it. I finally get to be a grownup. I’ve got three mortgages and a kid, so I’m a grownup. It’s nice to play that.”
By Kate O’Hare
Zap2It 2002