Ronald "Ron" Pederson (born January 8, 1978) is an award winning Canadian actor, improviser and theatre director who has performed extensively throughout Canada and in the United States. He has worked with most of Canada’s major theatres including The Stratford Festival, The Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, The Citadel Theatre, Alberta Theatre Projects, The Arts Club, The Vancouver Playhouse, The Young Centre, The Canadian Stage Company, The Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille and The SummerWorks Festival.Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Pederson began working professionally at the Citadel Theatre and The Phoenix Theatre and with award-winning playwright Stewart Lemoine’s Teatro La Quindicina and the Edmonton International Fringe Festival at a very young age. In 1995, at the invitation of Dana Andersen, Pederson joined the cast of the live improvised Soap Opera Die-Nasty. Over the next eight years Ron performed weekly on the Soap, worked with notable guest stars Mark McKinney, Mike Myers and Joe Flaherty, and completed the Die-Nasty Annual 53-Hour Soap-A-Thon. In 2002 Pederson won a Sterling Award for his portrayal of Ray Dooley in Martin McDonagh’s play The Beauty Queen of Leenane. He is an eight time Sterling Award nominee.Pederson was discovered in Hollywood while improvising at The Second City with Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara and Fred Willard in Joe Flaherty’s Improvised Show The Soap Also Rises in March, 2002. That year he turned down an invitation to join the Toronto Second City Main Stage Cast to begin work on FOX’s sketch comedy television series MADtv that September. He would perform with them for three seasons and was nominated for a Canadian Comedy Award for Best Television Performance for his work on MADtv: Season 10. Following his departure from MADtv Pederson went on to write and perform original sketches on CBS’s The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson for one season before deciding to return to Canada and to dedicate himself to the stage.He moved to Toronto in 2007 where he played Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors at The Canadian Stage Company and has since worked at Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, The Summerworks Festival and The Toronto Fringe Festival. Back in Edmonton he played Quasimodo in Catalyst Theatre’s Hunchback, which also played in Vancouver, and James in the world-premiere of the Sterling Award winning play Extinction Song written and directed by Ron Jenkins, which also played in Toronto (Summerworks Spotlight Award) and in Halifax (Merritt Award Nomination). In Vancouver his performance of Carmen Ghia in The Producers at the Arts Club earned him a Jessie Richardson Award Nomination. He joined the Acting Company of the Stratford Festival in 2013 playing Launcelot Gobo in The Merchant of Venice.Pederson’s recent film and television credits include providing the voice of the Golly Gee Kid in the YTV cartoon SIDEKICK, guest starring on Colin Mochrie's sitcom, She's the Mayor, CBC’s InSecurity and Degrassi:
[Of his time on TV]: My soul was almost sold. I was very dissatisfied there.
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I've never had a 10-year plan. I guess I'd still like to be working in theatre, producing plays with my company and acting and, I don't know, maybe make some money?