Today we’d like to introduce you to Forrest Anthony.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
For one reason or another, I never quite lost my Canadian accent, and pairing that fact with being named something fairly uncommon like “Forrest” (I was born just before the Tom Hanks movie came out, let it be known!), I had two fruitful ingredients for any typical schoolyard bully. If they weren’t making fun of my name or saying “Run, Forrest, Run” (I’ve definitely heard that at least 10,000+ times by now), they were mocking my accent, or just coming up with really low-effort insults like “Hey Forrest, you were born in a forest?”. Even though we can all agree this is pretty tame stuff, to kid me, this sort of harassment became a daily occurrence that really impacted me. It grew into physical altercations eventually too, but I digress. I think this birthed a desire for escapism in me which over the years translated into a love of film and gaming. Two film standouts from that were “The Mask” (1994) and “The Truman Show” (1998), both starring Jim Carrey, and both of which I watched on VHS countless times.
In so many respects I both saw myself in and attributed my silly/somber personality (which I tried to hide from the world) to those two films. My Mum even started calling me “her little Jim Carrey”. To me, that was a huge compliment. After all, Jim Carrey was my hero (besides my Dad, of course). It also birthed a desire to be ‘free’ and express myself how I wanted to. Not in a “I don’t want anyone to mock me for how I am” way, but instead in a “I don’t want to let others’ negativity affect me” way. This came to a fruition right under my nose when I was forced to perform as Lancelot in our school play called “Kids in Camelot”. The play being a hit with the school would bring me a sudden, short-lived burst of popularity and acceptance- from the very people who previously mocked me for it. I was so confused. This “Lancelot” I was playing was a goofier take on the character, and in doing so was an opportunity for me to just be me, under the guise of “performing”. I found myself so confused, as I suddenly became accepted for “who I was” while also feeling like nobody even knew who I really was. You could call this the “opening act” of what was a long, 18-year internal struggle between appeasing to what others want vs. just being “me”.
Through my childhood and formative teen years, I’d switched schools often but always continued taking the opportunities to perform when I could. Then, tragedy struck. I’d lost my Dad. My hero, my male role model, to cancer. It was tough. Everyone in my family handled it differently. Some, better than others. In the case of one of my brothers? For reasons deeper than I care to know, he set his targets on me to become his object of bullying from home. I guess that was his way to cope. Wonderful. In many respects, this set my personal progress I’d made back to the near the beginning, and to make matters worse, the final high school I was about to move to (the one that I’d eventually graduate from) was one where the student culture of the school itself harbored a great disrespect and mocking to the performing arts. There were clear lines between the different cliques, and the cliques themselves were all very exclusionary. That school didn’t take too kindly to “new kids”, and if you didn’t fit in to any of these clique molds, you’d find yourself subjected to your own company for longer than any new kid in a school ought to be. And if you wanted to perform? You were pretty much branded as a flamboyant drama nerd, or just seen as a freak in general. I know all of this because I witnessed it from the sidelines, lacking the courage to actually do what I wanted in fear of further ostracization, and watching with envy as the small handful who did it anyways carried on, regardless of the mockery they’d get behind their backs. I was being torn apart at a crossroads between my desire to perform/be “me”, and my desperation to be accepted as a “real Australian” like everyone else, instead of the reserved, introverted Canadian who felt like he didn’t belong here. My self-esteem was under assault from all directions. I still had only known rejection from girls I liked, had never even been kissed on the cheek, lived far off in the country which made socializing with any friends outside of school very difficult, and had older siblings who never wanted to drive me anywhere. That began a repression of my confidence and artistic passion for a few years even after graduating. However, that entire time I’d still kept my great love for film and gaming, and found some aspect of community and solace in the most unlikely of places; World of Warcraft. This was a game where I could play from home, feel like I’m being social, and enjoy myself. Unsurprisingly, just like with the performing arts, my school also mocked WoW players, condemning them to being ‘nerds’ (a title I now wear oh-so proudly). On all fronts, my desire to just accept myself regardless of judgement was being repressed heavily, and where High School was once my entire world, it passed– I never looked back.
After graduating, I found myself pressured by my family to further my studies by going to university and “being successful”. Initially I found myself begrudgingly choosing “safer” options, like Architecture or Graphic Design- things that I knew would’ve been approved by my parents, but eventually maneuvered something I enjoyed, gaming into a viable option– by taking a “Bachelor of Design for Games” at RMIT University in Melbourne. On top of that, I’d just moved into the big city, and finally had been able to escape it ‘all’; the awful high school experiences, the problematic brother I’d been forced to live with, and the pressure of conformity from those who didn’t “get” me. This was a clean slate for me. I was able to meet new people with far more common interests, as well as people from all walks of life that taught me how much beauty there is in diversity. This opened my simple, country-raised views to so many new concepts. As the years went by, I found happiness and acceptance among these new lifelong friends unlike I’d ever felt before, and even found myself slowly weaseling my way back into performing. My Mum had befriended the owner of a boutique agency, and as a kind gesture to her, she offered to sign me on. Now, keep in mind, at this point in my life, my face was pimple-covered, peach-fuzz ridden, my hair was at the “awkward” length, I was extremely self-conscious about being on camera, and I had a lisp that I’d never really gotten along with- but all of those factors didn’t stop me. At Uni, our major semesterly assignments were making big games in small teams, and in that I’d found myself the opportunity to do some voice acting for characters in both my own games, and the games of my peers and their teams. Outside of Uni, I was auditioning as often as I could, and getting my first real taste of “the industry”. Did I book anything at all? No. Did I care? Also no. The sheer dopamine hits I’d gotten from simply doing what I’d always wanted to do was euphoric. I was suddenly realizing that time isn’t exactly slowing down– and I didn’t want to settle for doing this as just a ‘side’ thing. I needed to take back control of my destiny. After graduating, I continued my studies for one final year through an online-only Honours Program. Outside of the odd group lunch or coffee hangout, this was my first real taste of what my life after my degree would really be like without the constant positive stimulus of friends. It was the solitude I needed to truly evaluate if this was the future I wanted.
Firstly, I came to the conclusion that while I love the games industry and that entire culture, I think deep down I had to face some truths. Despite the fact that I was good at it, graduated at the top of my class alongside my best friend, and am still engrossed in that world today, I faced the music and knew it was always destined to play second-fiddle to my love of performance. Secondly, being in Australia with a Canadian accent severely limited my job opportunities, and that was a hard pill to swallow. I’d even tried learning the accent, to limited success. With this dire reality in mind, my sister (who was working as a model) told me that modeling can occasionally bring opportunities for acting, through commercials and what not. Coincidentally, right around the same time, I found myself getting approached by model scouts on numerous occasions… had I become… “attractive”? With this newfound confidence, it just so happened that my acne was disappearing, my speech therapy to unlearn my lisp was working, and my sister’s agent signed me onto their roster at their modeling agency. During my brief tenure in that world, I only got a few opportunities to actually “act” outside of standing still and having my photos taken. That’s when I realized I needed to take greater measures to find the opportunity I truly sought. If Australia wasn’t going to have much work for a tall, lanky guy with an American accent, maybe I can find work myself. I started browsing amateur actor websites for short film roles, more commercial work, and I even started a short-lived YouTube channel that taught me valuable lessons I’d carry with me moving forward.
With all of that small-scale work being done, it did reach an inevitable plateau. I knew I needed to get into a bigger pond with bigger fish. This culminated in an epiphany that I credit to getting me where I am now. Now, for what follows, I need to make it clear that I am a heavy sleeper. The kind that always wakes up groggy, and in total zombie-mode until I’ve had my coffee. This is important because on a particular night, I had a dream where I was in a white void, with nothing but mist, and then suddenly the most peculiar things happened (as they tend to in dreams). I began seeing glimpses of Margot Robbie, Hugh Jackman, Dacre Montgomery, the Hemsworth brothers, and many other Australian actors that I both had admired and had “made the leap” to living and working at Hollywood in one point of their careers or another. I found myself hit with major FOMO, and my heart was pounding heavily, so much so that I could feel it actually happening while I was dreaming. As dream cohesiveness usually doesn’t make sense, suddenly I was suddenly playing piano better than I ever could, then dancing, then singing, and then I became adorned in a superhero outfit with a flaming cape, and started flying around. I could feel the ice-cold wind at my high speed and altitude, as well as the scorching heat from my cape, right up against the back of my neck. I flew down to the ground. Suddenly I was menacingly laughing at someone who looked familiar and saw my reflection in a nearby pane of glass, I was… a giant robot? This felt almost like a themed roller-coaster ride, or one of those big franchise movie intros where it shows a variety of characters before presenting the logo (you know the ones)- but alas, there we no brakes on this ride. After turning back from my reflection to the “someone” standing before me, it was me… seeing myself. He was so happy… I was happy. Happier than I think I’d ever been in my actual life before, and then it hit me, hard and certain– my brain was feeding me the culmination of almost a decade of repressed wants, desires, and dreams. It was throwing every fantasy, every dream role, aspiration, all of it, all at once. It was the closest thing to a lucid dream I’d ever felt. And then there it was again, my heart, pounding louder and heavier, like a natural alarm to finally wake up. And I did, heavily breathing and staring up at the ceiling. I checked the time. It was 4:45AM, and despite only having about 5 hours of sleep, I’d gotten up like as if I’d had the greatest sleep of my life. No zombie-mode. This was extremely abnormal. I got up, walked to my apartment window, looked upon Melbourne’s beautiful city skyline with the first light of dawn, took a deep breath, composed myself, and, be it a premonition yet to happen, or an epiphany, had this visceral feeling of certainty I had never had in my life up until that point. No second guessing what other people want from me, or what to do to please others. In that moment I knew I needed to move to Hollywood if I ever wanted to realize this dream of being an actor. I didn’t even consider the material aspects of it, I just knew in my gut: “If you want to chase that dream– you have to move. This is non-negotiable. You will not find what you’re looking for if you stay here”. Then and there, at the ass-crack of dawn, I decided I’d call my Mum and tell her about this personal revelation; and despite this feeling of certainty, I still wanted her approval. By sheer coincidence, she was also awake quite early that morning and had answered. When I explained to her that I needed to move to LA, I expected her motherly fears to kick in, to advise me to pursue something more “stable”. But instead I got understanding, and unwavering support. She then referenced the “Little Jim Carrey” nickname, and told me she knew this was coming eventually. Which made me cry and experience a sweet catharsis. From that day onward, I wasn’t Forrest the game designer, or “Forrest Rutherford” the model, I was Forrest Anthony, the Actor.
Over the next 9-10 months leading up to my departure, I ended up joining an Australian acting school that had an LA-Based program called “The LA Experience”. This was my ticket to getting to where I needed to be. 6 months of LA living with other ambitious actors, meeting and studying under casting directors, agents, coaches, producers, writers, and more. What I had learned over this time were the crucial ins-and-outs of this industry, how to navigate it, and how to stand out. Once that was finished, I took my newfound knowledge with me to Vancouver, Canada (which I was told was the “Canadian Hollywood” or “North Hollywood”). Suddenly, my Canadian heritage came full circle- my citizenship-by-birth allowed me to move there free of hassle. Now? I’m able to proudly declare myself an actor, sure, a small name in the far bigger picture, but who cares? Simply getting to do what makes me happiest, to work on professional film and tv sets & performing in the voice booth brings me a happiness I never tire from feeling. That doesn’t mean everything is easy, in fact “the grind” seems to be greater than ever lately, and my morale and resolve have been tested time and time again, but that will never stop me. The fulfillment I feel for being able to professionally ‘play pretend’ is reward enough. Being able to one day sustain myself solely off of it, and work onward and upwards to bigger and greater roles is what drives me. Moral of the story? It’s never too late to pursue your true passions (even in spite of what your surroundings may otherwise say), and it’s never too late to be true to yourself. Took me 18 years! I’d like to think that I’m making both of my parents proud, even if this is still only just the beginning of what’s in store for me!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Absolutely not. I had to endure bullying both at school and at home, the loss of my Dad, the constant internal and external battles of self acceptance, and a massive amount of regret for repressing what made me happiest. You’d think that’s it, but even once I’d finally decided to be true to myself, the next obstacle presented itself- having to move away from everything I’ve ever known, and everyone I’ve ever loved, with just a single luggage bag, and the well-wishes of those close to me. It was absolutely terrifying… but it forced so much growth upon me, and the experience since has been a never-ending lesson. There have been hard times, and even harder times, and going through lockdown without any family members or close friends in the same country as me let alone hemisphere was rough. That was a very testing time, and a level of solitude I’ll never forget. But I hardened myself and weathered the storms, and continue to do so. Everyone has their ups and downs. I think what defines us is how we handle them and how we choose to grow from them. In my case, I don’t think anybody can teach you how to prepare for chasing a dream. It requires sacrifice, courage, and you really just take it one step at a time with your head and heart in the right direction, following your instincts. They’ll guide you.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m an Actor! I’ve done work for TV, Film, Video Games, Commercials, Radio, Animations – you name it! So far, I’m most proud of my voice role as the power-obsessive, time-manipulating villain “Christopher” in the horror game “Fobia: St. Dinfna Hotel”, as well as my appearance as a pivotal character on Netflix’s Firefly Lane as “Parker”; the father of Katherine Heigl’s character, Tully Hart. My peers know me for my energy and silly attitude, and having an ever-present smile that almost refuses to go down. I think what sets me apart from others is that I’m in this bizarre intersection with my career, where I’m sort of a ‘Jack Of All Trades’. When I grow my hair and beard out, I look far older. If I get a short haircut, and a clean shave? I’m a convincing teenager. My voice also has a lot of range, and for every teenage/college-aged character I’ve performed as or auditioned for on screen, I’ve performed equally as many older men with my voice in the lower, deeper ranges. For a game about mythological wars, I gave vocal performances for figures like Odin, Beowulf, and Julius Caesar, who are historically portrayed as old men. In a Virtual Reality murder mystery game called “Dyschronia: Chronos Alternate”, I play one of the central characters; an old professor named “Albert Rumford”, pushing the more ‘senior’ aspects of vocal inflexions. But I also play his copied-consciousness AI named “Justicius”, which is the same voice, but without the age or the humanity. He is stone cold and robotic by contrast. Both are effectively the same character, but completely different. It’s an incredible amount of fun alternating between both in a single session. For shows like “Firefly Lane”, I’m playing a 16-year-old, and in the TV movie “Love Amongst the Stars”, I’m a college-aged mischief maker. When I got into this business, I never predicted in my wildest dreams that I’d end up playing characters both considerably younger and older than me!
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I think an industry like this will always have an inevitable luck factor playing a part… but that isn’t specifically a concerning thing. Luck is just one of the ingredients that make this industry unpredictable in all of the best ways. In life, it’s a force of nature that is entirely out of our control, and in this line of work it is no different. Like I mentioned before about ups & downs, how you handle and react to luck is what really defines your character, I feel. There’s an old saying I keep closely and remind myself of often; “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” When I’m given an audition to work on, I’ve learned not to overthink it. Bryan Cranston had some excellent advice that I’ve really worked into my workflow- I do exactly what they’re asking of me, which is to become that character and act. If they don’t like, that’s ok. I know I did my job to the best of my ability, and I know that I pushed my vulnerabilities and creativity to give them something real that stands out from everyone else. So long as I know I’m doing everything within my power that I can do, when I send off those audition tapes I always stay positive and optimistic about what may come next, because I know I’ve fulfilled every part of the equation that I do have control over– but I never hold my breath or dwell on it. Even now, just recently I’ve endured a rather challenging string of bad “luck” – Across a few short months, I found myself pinned, and subsequently released for 6 roles across film, TV, and voice acting. The feeling of getting SO CLOSE, only for it to whiff is a tough one, and if you let it- it can wear you down, emotionally, mentally, and physically. But I like being in control of how I feel, and certain feelings are a choice. I try to see the silver lining to those sorts of obstacles. A negative perspective could see this as some kind of rigged game, that it’s unfair, or that I’m not good enough. But I choose to see it in a healthier and more productive way! I was good enough to be considered for those roles. Just because I didn’t get them doesn’t mean I wasn’t the best pick. Getting pinned in and of itself is a victory all on its own! It tells me I must be doing something right, and is encouragement to keep trying, after all, sometimes it’s a factor completely out of your control – and sometimes that exact same unpredictable factor is exactly what helps you finally get that part or that opportunity. So long as you fulfill the “preparation” part of “luck”, then it’s far easier to stay positive and know the universe is going to deliver on the “opportunity” part eventually. As they say, “trust the process“!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://imdb.me/forrestanthony
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forrest_anthony/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ForrestAnthony
- Other: https://linktr.ee/forrestanthony
Image Credits
Voice booth selfie + Magazine photo on the table: Forrest Anthony Shirtless photo + jacket: Ed Purnomo Smiling photo w/ blue background: Troy Linton Smoldering both w/ black background: Jenna Berman Sunflower Field photo w/ friend Darius Willis: Claire Pipher
