This is what you can learn about British Columbia actor Nicholas Lea on the Internet: Someone paid $500 for a plastic chair he once sat on. Someone else asked him for his used water bottle. His favourite tea is peppermint. In person he looks taller and his eyes twinkle incessantly. His birthday is June 22, 1962. He started acting at 25. He served in the Navy. (This is exaggerated. In fact, he enrolled in naval training one summer after high school.)
The X Files may be off the air, but X-philes are still watching Lea. Rabid fans regularly update Web sites devoted to the actor, who appeared on the long-running TV series as double-crossing agent Alex Krycek. The kind of bad guy a girl wouldn't mind meeting in a dark alley, according to one site.
"When I feel like my career is going nowhere, it's good to get on the Internet and see that people are still interested," says a bemused Lea.
One superfan in the United States got a copy of Lea's upcoming TV movie, The Investigation, which airs Sunday on CTV. It's about the botched police investigation involving serial killer Clifford Olson. Lea plays RCMP Corporal Les Forsythe, one of two officers (Corporal Darryl Kettles is played by Lochlyn Munro) who zeroed in on Olson soon after kids went missing in the early 1980s -- only to see egos and an incompetent bureaucracy let him run loose until he killed eight girls and three boys.
On Lea's fan site are clips of his key scenes in The Investigation; an interview "Leafan" did with director Anne Wheeler; and her own review, in which she expresses disappointment that "Nick doesn't even show up until half an hour in."
Lea, on the other hand, found the role terribly satisfying. This was Serious Drama. A big change from the fantasy worlds of The X Files, John Woo's Once A Thief, and the feature film Vertical Limit. "It gave me a chance to sink my teeth into something real and tangible."
He prepared for the role diligently. When he met with the real Les Forsythe, now retired from the force, he took a tape recorder with him so he wouldn't miss a thing.
On the first of several meetings, Forsythe drove them to Olson's old home, to street corners where the missing children were last seen, and to Forsythe's old RCMP detachment.
"We spoke in pretty good detail about the investigation," recalls Lea, "how that affected him emotionally, and the ability to do his job." He also got hold of the book Where Shadows Linger, which was an early inspiration for the movie.
It was written by ex-RCMP officer W. Les Holmes with RCMP Superintendent Bruce Northrop and details the mistakes made in the original Olson investigation.
Although the movie was filmed in 2001, CTV held back The Investigation. The network worried it would be criticized for giving Olson unnecessary publicity, and waited as news grew of another alleged serial killer, this time in Port Coquitlam, B.C.
"The very things that were plaguing the Olson investigation in the early 1980s seem to have plagued the Robert Pickton pig-farm investigations," says Bill Mustos, senior vice-president of dramatic programming. With Pickton's trial date set last week, CTV hurriedly scheduled The Investigation for Sunday.
Lea is relieved the film is finally airing. It was his chance "to do something worthwhile in Canada," and he hopes it leads to more work here. In the spring, he bought his dream home: "a place in the Gulf Islands where I can pull my boat up to the dock."
He had spent eight years in L.A., but "Sept. 11, the war in Iraq and the way things were going politically down in the States didn't hold me there," he says. "It's hard to imagine precisely the level of fear they try to keep you in. After a while, it just got to be too much."
So he's back among family and old friends, and nurturing his relationship with his girlfriend. He loves the simple island life and the friendly acceptance of his neighbours, "really solid, good people."
But even island folk go on-line. "By week three, somebody made mention of me being on The X Files. You realize that they know a lot about you, because they've got a computer, and that's a bit unnerving," he says.
Still, imagine how much an X-phile would pay for Lea's boat.
The Investigation airs on CTV tomorrow at 8 p.m.