Born in Redhill, Surrey, UK, and raised in Canada, Hewlett ? a regular on the TV series Traders and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Stargate Atlantis, and the reluctant hero, Worth, of the art-house hit Cube ? runs Darkyl Media, a small designer of Web sites for the film and TV industry. (One client, coincidentally, was a company called Atlantis Films.) He is also a founder of fusefilm.com, a Web networking forum for filmmakers. The eldest of six children, Hewlett had gotten his first computer, a Commodore 64, while in his mid-teens, and became a self-described computer nerd. But his acting side had already taken hold as well, and while in high school at Toronto's St. George's College Choir School for Boys appeared in 8mm and 16mm student films by classmate Vincenzo Natali, the future writer-director of Cube.

Hewlett dropped out of school his senior year in order to pursue both computer and acting careers. He appeared in the low-budget horror films The Darkside (1987) and Pin (1988) and guested on the syndicated series My Secret Identity and Friday the 13th. Shortly afterward he found himself co-starring in the ensemble cast of director John Boorman's Where the Heart Is alongside the formidable likes of Uma Thurman, Crispin Glover, Suzy Amis, Dabney Coleman and Joanna Cassidy. In 1996, Hewlett began what is perhaps his best-known role until now, playing quirky computer whiz Grant Jansky on the hit Canadian series Traders, earning two Gemini Award nominations ? the Canadian Emmy-equivalent ? for his work. In a case of art imitating life, Hewlett before this had spent two years as resident computer expert at the messaging network Voice-Tel Canada.

In 2001, after a spate of Canadian movies and telefilms including Scanners II: The New Order and Desire and Hell at Sunset Motel with Sherilyn Fenn, Hewlett and his wife, actress Soo Garay, moved to Los Angeles. Hewlett had a high-profile role in an episode of ER, playing a father who wants the doctors to euthanize his severely handicapped five-year-old son, but ironically he's made more of a mark back in Canada ? appearing in three episodes of the Vancouver-shot Stargate SG-1 as astrophysicist Dr. Ronald McKay, now of the Stargate Atlantis team.

Hewlett, who won a Golden Sheaf Award for best actor for his performance as a neurotic security guard in Natali's 1997 short Elevated, recently reunited with the director on the film Cypher, playing opposite Jeremy Northam and Lucy Liu.