Canadian actor Cameron Mathison was born on August 25, 1969 in Sarnia, Ontario. His childhood was marked by disease: he was diagnosed with Perthes disease, which leads to the hip joint partly collapsing. Thus, he spent almost four years wearing braces on his legs, which avoided the arthritis that he might suffer as an adult. He went on to graduate from McGill University in Ontario, Quebec, with a degree in civil engineering.
Mathison began acting in 1997, where he played a minor supporting role in the television movie Any Mother’s Son. Since then, he has played scores of roles on television, playing guest roles in shows such as The Drew Carey Show, The Job, CSI, JAG, What I Like About You and Hope and Faith. He also played roles for film, making his debut in the 1998 release 54, and since then appeared in the Canadian independent release Washed Up.
However, Mathison is perhaps best known for his role in the daytime soap All My Children. He entered the drama in 1998 as Ryan Lavery, a con man seeking to strike it big in Pine Valley. He has since gone on to become one of the soap’s high-profile characters, playing the role of the tragic hero—his judgments and decision, although all for the good, always turn against him. In one storyline, he assiduously defended his lover Kendall Hart (Alicia Minshew) only to see her “cheat” on him, a fact which isn’t actually true. Mathison plays the role up to this day, save for a one-year break in 2002. His performance earned him three Daytime Emmy nominations, and one Soap Opera Digest Award in 1999.
Mathison has also dabbled on reality and competition programs. He was host of the reality series I Wanna Be a Soap Star, which aired in 2004, and the game show Your Place or Mine? which premiered in 2008. He also participated on the fifth season of Dancing with the Stars, where he and his partner Edyta Sliwinska was eliminated on the eighth week.