Queen’s alumnus Rogan Christopher didn’t always have his sights set on Hollywood.
“Acting was always a side project,” he said. “My [university] degrees are in economics and mathematics.”
Even on the side, Christopher, ArtSci ’05 and ’06, wasn’t the acting enthusiast one might assume. He played football and ran track during his years as a Gael, but his aspirations of playing professional football were cut short due to an ankle injury during his final season in 2005.
The former varsity athlete has since appeared alongside actors Shane West and Maggie Q in a recurring role on the hit CW series Nikita. Next month, he will be in Kingston promoting his new film, Footsteps.
Christopher plays Martin Tate, a war veteran who arrives home to a troubled family life in the American Midwest. Tate’s father, played by Don Tjart, suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Christopher said Footsteps will resonate with Queen’s students because it’s a story of resiliency and of striving to be better.
“At the end of the day it’s about a man trying to help his father get back on his own two feet,” he said. “These are things we all go through at various points in our lives.
“There’s a pretty universal undertone of family that audiences will identify with.”
Footsteps is a project that materialized for Christopher after discussions with fellow Queen’s graduates Allie Dunbar, ArtSci ’07, and Andrew Pigett, ArtSci ’07, in New York City.
“It was serendipitous,” he said. “Allie and Andrew were both exceptionally talented and it just fell into place.”
The film’s director, Noam Kroll, worked with Christopher on the short film Unsound in 2011. Kroll graduated from the film and television program at Humber College in Toronto.
Footsteps is also poised to capture the attention of audiences south of the border, Christopher said. The Canadian-based production was screened in Los Angeles last weekend and the next step, he said, is New York City’s Tribeca Film Festival in April.
Shot last fall in Bowmanville, Ont. — on a budget of $500,000 — Footsteps is part of a new breed of relatively low-budget features that have taken advantage of improvements in video and digital technology.
“It would have cost $2 million to make this film just five or six years ago,” Christopher said.
But the modest feature film is a testament to the current state of the film industry in Canada.
“In Toronto, the industry is alive and well,” Christopher said. “We’re performing at a level that’s unprecedented and we’re getting better every year.”
Still, he acknowledges there have been challenges.
“I think it’s about looking at the negatives as setbacks rather than failures. You’ve got to make it happen,” he said. The athlete-turned-actor said he follows the wisdom of his athletic coaches back at Queen’s.
“The number one thing my coaches preached was resiliency. And looking at obstacles as speed bumps, not road blocks,” he said.
Tags
Film, Footsteps, Rogan Christopher
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