In this installment of the Movie Talk blog I shed some light on actor and producer Matthew Bellows.
Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Matthew is a professional actor and performer of the Stage and Screen. Matthew Holds a Masters of Fine Arts in acting from the Prestigious Old Globe/University of San Diego Graduate acting program. Matthew currently plays a character named Jax on the tv series Extinct. Extinct just finished its first season and I got a chance to catch up with Matthew and ask him some questions.
Before you check out the interview, watch the season 1 trailer for his amazing show Extinct below.
How did you get involved in the film industry? Did you always want to be an actor/producer?
I started acting in Junior High school. I was lucky to have a family that exposed me to the arts and had weekly family movie nights. After my first ever play in 7th grade, Acting quickly became my favorite thing in the world to do.
Theater is a little more straightforward as far as “how to” get involved, and I started my career there, and continue to love it to this day. Film and television are a little trickier to get involved in, I started chasing down projects in college and have been slowly chipping away at it since. Ultimately going to graduate school at the Prestigious Old Globe Theater and receiving my MFA in acting there. That move has been instrumental in moving my career forward, if anything just because I got better and better at the thing I have the most control over, my acting.
Back in 2012 you won the action on film award for a short film called Hellespont. How did that achievement jumpstart your career?
The year before I went to Graduate School, I had just finished a production of The Scarlett Pimpernel. A really fun show with a lot of swashbuckling and sword play. I’m an athletic person and a physical performer and I had an idea to choreograph a fight out in the famous Utah Salt Flats. I thought it would be really cool to shoot around a complete fight and not use any camera tricks to make it seem real, but to do it for real, and in this epic environment in the Utah salt Desert. I approached a friend of mine and he wrote the script and we got the money together and made it happen. The most valuable lesson from this, is that things are possible if you work hard. It seems so simple, but once we jumped through all the hoops and completed the project, it was incredibly gratifying and illuminating to look back and say “hey, I did that”. That “go and do” philosophy is necessary in a field like Acting.
You took part in the Full House reboot called fuller house. How was it to be involved on a show that most people call a classic?
SO COOL! I mean, I grew up watching these wonderful women every Friday night. TGIF! So to spend a week on set at Warner Brothers with Candace Cameron, Jodi Sweeton and Andrea Barber was a real treat. And the set itself is just full of kind people who are anxious to make their audience laugh. They work hard at making sure jokes land and that the show is going to entertain and bring joy into peoples lives. I had a great time, Really proud of that one.
You star as Jax on the new show Extinct. Could you tell us a bit about your character?
The show takes place 400 years after the end of human civilization here on earth. Humanity died in an Alien war, and 400 years later, a small group of humans are brought back to life to begin bringing human civilization back, But they discover they are not alone, “people” are already on earth, and they want to stop them. Enter Jax. Jax is a skin rider, a human being infected/possessed with an alien parasite, that detests every thing that it means to be human. He is on a mission to protect his kind and to kill or assimilate every human he encounters. He truly believes that human beings don’t deserve the world.
He is extremely complex, he is a human body with an alien mind, in essence he is two people, two personalities that are constantly battling each other for total dominion over the human form.
There are so many people that want to get into the same profession as you. People make mistakes along the way but it’s better to prevent them with help from people like you. If you have any advice for the younger generation what would it be?
Well, first off I would pass along the advice of an undergraduate acting teach of mine, which is “If you can be happy doing anything other than this, do that other thing, not this”. Not to be a downer, but this IS an insanely difficult path to pursue, and often people pursue it with motives that aren’t going to serve them well down the line. So if you’re passionate about something else, consider that.
BUT, if Acting is what you want, truly want, then my advice is, get as good as you can at this craft. Train, study, practice, and train. You have so little control over the industry, but you do have control over your mastery of your craft. Become the very best at the thing that you love, be the best and no one will think you’re crazy for chasing this dream, even though you might be.
Go and check out Matthews website and find him on social media.
Website - https://www.matthewbellows.com/
Instagram - @matthewbellows