Ashmore was born in Richmond, British Columbia,[1] the son of Linda (née Davis), a homemaker, and Rick Ashmore,[2] a manufacturing engineer. He was raised in St. Albert, Alberta and Brampton, Ontario, where he attended Earnscliffe Senior Public School and Turner Fenton Secondary School. His identical twin brother, Aaron Ashmore, is also an actor. Aaron and Shawn have played twins in several movies, but have also pursued roles independently. Aaron is slightly taller than Shawn and, according to Aaron, Shawn often gets cast as the nice guy while Aaron is cast as the bully.[3] They have a "GMA" tattoo on their wrists that stands for "Good Man Ashmore"; their grandfather had a similar tattoo.[4]
Ashmore starred as Cadet Major Brad Rigby in Cadet Kelly,[7] a Disney Channel original film which aired in 2002 and he guest-starred as Eric Summers in two episodes of Smallville, a series on which his brother was later cast in the role of Jimmy Olsen.[8] Ashmore had starring roles on Animorphs as Jake and In a Heartbeat as Tyler Connell.[9][10]
In 2005, Ashmore starred in a CTV TV movie about Terry Fox's historic run across Canada, which aired in September of that year.[13][14] In 2008, he starred as one of the leads in the 2008 horror film The Ruins.[15] Ashmore was cast in Adam Green's 2010 dramatic thriller Frozen as Joe Lynch.[16]
In April 2016, Shawn appeared in Quantum Break, a singleplayer third-person shooter video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Studios, that features high budget live action TV show-like cut scenes where Shawn plays the main character, Jack Joyce.[23][24] He also did the motion capture and voice acting for the character.[25][26]
From October 2016 to January 2017, he played the role of Sam Spencer on the U.S. legal drama Conviction.[27][28] The series was filmed in Toronto.[29]
In 2020, Ashmore recurred in the second season of the Amazon Prime Video superhero series The Boys as Lamplighter, a former member of the superhero group the Seven.
Personal life
On July 27, 2012, Ashmore married film executive Dana Renee Wasdin, whom he met while filming Frozen.[30] The couple has one son, born in 2017.[31][32]