Mallari was born on February 19 1988, in the Philippines, but was raised in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. Mallari was competitive at a national level in Taekwondo, for which he has a third degree black belt. He was twice a Junior Canadian National Taekwondo champion. However, he gave that up when he was at the age of 13. He then took up basketball with the intention of turning professional but an injury prevented him from pursuing that profession. While attending the University of Toronto, Mallari decided to pursue acting. His most notable role to date has been in the SyFy series Dark Matter based on the comic book series of the same name. Since June 2015, he has starred as Four (a.k.a. Ryo Tetsuda, Ryo Ishida).