CullenBoysAnonymous posted this interesting article about Chaske Spencer. Happy reading. -Liana- (via @cullenboysanonymous)
An article in the Great Falls Tribune,
local newspaper to small-town Poplar, Montana on the Fort Peck Indian
Reservation, where Chaske Spencer grew up, contains a lot of background
information of the man who would be Sam Uley.
“It’s OK,” he said about the ubiquity of screaming fans. “But I try not to get too caught up in it.”
Before moving to Poplar, Spencer’s first audition was in Lewiston,
Idaho, when he was 10 years old. He tried out for “You’re a Good Man,
Charlie Brown.”
In Poplar, his mom recalled her son singing in a Christmas play with
his school and attending a theater arts program in Helena during the
summer of 1987.
When Chaske was 17, some friends of his parents invited the family
to the First Americans in the Arts Awards in California. It was there
that he first crossed paths with Great Falls native Rene Haynes, a Los
Angeles-based casting director recognized for her Native American and
First Nations casting.
Chaske spent some time at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston
studying scenes, characters and film and video before deciding it was
time to hit the road to try his hand at acting in the Big Apple. With
$100 in his pocket and a one-way ticket, he headed to New York City.
What gave him the nerve to attempt such a feat?
“Pure stupidity. I don’t think I actually thought about it,” Chaske
said. “So, would I do it again? I probably would. I always liked taking
risks like that. I don’t recommend it to everybody.”
The struggling actor couch surfed until he found a job in two or
three days waiting tables. After that, his list of jobs included
bartending, catering and modeling.
He soon began training in his craft, taking acting classes and landing Dracula in an off off-Broadway production.
The woman he had met with his parents on their trip to California
cast him in the 2002 feature film “Skins,” about a Lakota Sioux tribal
police officer in South Dakota.
“She’s altered my life,” Chaske said about Haynes, a graduate of C.M. Russell High School.
Following “Skins,” Chaske appeared in Steven Spielberg’s TV
miniseries “Into the West,” before Haynes cast him in the “Twilight”
series.
“You knew he was going to get something big, but it was surprising
when he got a plum role like this,” Peterson said, and added that the
series’ author, Meyer, told the movie’s director that, when she
envisioned the Sam Uley character in the books, Chaske is whom she
envisioned.
For the film, where the majority of his screen time is spent
shirtless, Chaske said he worked with a trainer to gain 20 pounds of
muscle.
Chaske means “first-born son” in Lakota. He has two younger sisters,
and he is an enrolled member of the Assiniboine Sioux tribe on his
mother’s side and the Nez Perce tribe on his father’s side.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” he said. “I’ve lost roles because I
wasn’t Indian enough. I can’t figure it out, and I don’t want to waste
time trying to figure it out.”
Being Native got him the role of Sam, he added, for which he’s grateful.
“It’s cool because it’s very contemporary,” Chaske said. “It’s not all leather and feather.”
click HERE for complete article
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