Yellowknife (May 26/06) - "I'm sitting in a hotel room in Los Angeles right now, just smiling."

Right after a trip to New York, Yellowknife's Dustin Milligan is finding it hard to express how his life has changed in the last couple of years.

Dustin Milligan stars in the CTV movie "Eight Days to Live," airing Sunday night. The former Yellowknifer is making a big splash in Hollywood, with a number of movie roles and an upcoming TV series on the way. - photo courtesy of CTV

"It's pretty ridiculous," he says.

Only a few days previous, the 20-year-old actor had his first experience on the red carpet during an industry event to present Runaway, the new CW (the network replacing UPN and the WB) series that Milligan is set to star in.

"I was just running on pure adrenaline," he says of the event. "I didn't eat for like a full 48 hours and I didn't even sleep."

"It was just unbelievable. I've wanted to do that since I was like, eight."

He calls the series an "action-family-group-drama," which follows a wrongly-accused murderer and his family on the run.

He co-stars with Donnie Wahlberg, a one-time member of the music group New Kids on the Block, who has previously starred in Band of Brothers and Boston Public.

It's been quite the ride.

After leaving for "Hollywood North" (Vancouver, B.C.), the Sir John Franklin high school graduate has been engaged in a steady stream of work in upcoming films, following smaller roles on Da Vinci's City Hall and The Dead Zone.

First up is his role in the CTV original movie Eight Days to Live, in which he plays Joseph C. Spring, a true story about a young man who survived eight days trapped inside his crushed car at the bottom of a B.C. ravine in 2001.

Milligan said he wouldn't be spending the length of the movie trapped in a car, however, as the story is told in a series of flashbacks, setting up Spring's mysterious disappearance and miraculous survival.

On top of this, he has upcoming roles in the films Butterfly on a Wheel, with Pierce Brosnan, In the Land of the Women, with Meg Ryan, and The Butterfly Effect 2, all of which he said he eagerly waits to see come out.

At the mention of his hometown, Milligan is quick to extend an offer he placed on his website: "If someone from Yellowknife recognizes me, I'll take them to a movie. If they're of age, I'll take them out clubbing," he says. That depends on his schedule, of course.

Milligan says Yellowknife (where he was born and raised), played a huge role in his development as an artist, invoking the "it takes a village to raise a child" cliche.

He cites the support of his parents and his instructors at Sir John as being vital.

"Very few people said 'it's not going to happen, he's not going to make it.' I felt confident because people never doubted I should give it a try."

Milligan said his sister Molly choose a similar unbeaten path, becoming a professional snowboarder in Whistler, B.C.

Milligan hopes to give back to students one day, encouraging them to follow their dreams.

"If you actually believe that you can do something and then follow through and put in the energy required, there's a good chance it will happen," he says. "And if it doesn't happen, at least you'll learn something along the way."

Milligan's mother, former Yellowknife city councillor Jean Wallace, still lives in Yellowknife, as she has for the last 30 years. His father, Brian Milligan, now lives in Edmonton.

Eight Days to Live airs Sunday on CTV (10 p.m. Ch. 2 on regular cable and other times on digital cable).