Born on December 27, 1976 in Westford, Massachusetts, Aaron Stanford is an actor best and perhaps singularly known for his role as the good-guy-turned-villain superhero Pyro in the X-Men series of films. The son of a professor and a publishing professional, he attended the State University of New York, then transferred to Rutgers University Mason Gross School of Arts, where he graduated magna !$#!# laude in 2000. He resides in Silver Lake, California.
Aaron Stanford’s foray into the film industry was via a low-budget independently produced film called Tadpole in 2002, where he played Oscar Grubma, a 15-year-old boy who harbored a crush on his stepmother, who is played by Sigourney Weaver. He was 23 years old when the movie was being filmed. Apparently, the performance was noticeable enough to earn him a Golden Satellite Award nomination for his first role. From 2001 to 2002, he appeared on a television series called Third Watch as a Russian teenager. Such performances prompted Daily Variety to name him as one of the Top Ten Actors to Watch, while Entertainment Weekly put him on the It List. In 2004, Stanford appeared in a production of Where Do We Live at the Vineyard Theater, then another film called Winter Solstice.
Tadpole director Bryan Singer, impressed with Stanford’s performance in the breakthrough movie, cast him as Pyro in the second installment of X-Men in 2003. He subsequently played the same character in the third X-Men movie in 2006. Other than this, he also appeared in the ABC drama Traveler about friends who are framed up by their good friend in view of a terrorist attack. In 2006, he appeared in The Hills Have Eyes and similarly named recipient of One To Watch award at the 2006 Young Hollywood Awards. His other screen credits include Flakes, Live Free or Die, Runaway, and Standing Still.