Ponoka native Shaun Johnston portrays patriarch Jack Bartlett on Heartland, but has played some far less amiable characters over the years.
Bad guys actually used to be his specialty: “I used to make my living killing people and beating my women,” joked Johnston — before more heroic parts came his way.
One of his more dastardly roles was U.S. Army Col. Nelson Miles, who was indirectly blamed when soldiers committed the 1890 massacre of at least 200 aboriginal men, women and children in South Dakota.
“Oh yes, he was a villain,” Johnston recalled of the character he played in the Emmy-Award-winning 2007 TV movie Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. But it wasn’t Miles’s bigotry that gave Johnston the most trouble when preparing to portray him on camera. (“An actor has to separate his own beliefs from those of his characters,” he explained.)
His biggest challenge was that Miles was an actual historical figure. And Johnston admitted he sweats over playing real people, whether living or dead, because either way he feels they are owed extreme accuracy in their portrayals.
A few parts he deemed not worth taking on.
One real-life villain he refused to play was Graham James, the predatory hockey coach who was imprisoned for sexually abusing young players, including Sheldon Kennedy. “I had children and I was coaching minor hockey at the time. I couldn’t take that role while holding the torch as a community role model,” said Johnston.
The Edmonton-based actor hasn’t really taken on any scoundrels roles since donning the cowboy hat of fictional Jack Bartlett for the past eight seasons of Heartland (it’s the longest-running one-hour scripted drama in the history of Canadian television). And he admitted, “I miss it. I miss being a bad guy. ... It’s the same craft but it’s certainly a different mindset. ...”
Johnston’s various film roles came up for discussion because he is guest acting instructor at Red Deer College’s Motion Picture Arts program for this 12-week term. And that means spending a lot of time explaining to students how to achieve skills that, after his 30 years in the business, have become intuitive.
Johnston’s biggest message to young up-and-coming actors is “no acting is allowed” in film acting. In other words, he’s instructing that they have to feel what their characters are feeling to make it believable to the audience.
“Squinting eyes, flaring nostrils, those are all just acting tricks, things (some actors) keep in their tool kit.” Johnston doesn’t advise using any “tricks,” because showing an external semblance of sadness won’t convince anyone the character is really sad.
“If you feel it, I’m going to feel it,” he said. “If you’re just trying to show me that you’re sad, I’m going to find it false.”
So far, Johnston is pleased with his students’ efforts, noting they are showing vulnerability in front of the camera. “I’m seeing some talent. They can go deep, for sure. They aren’t afraid to tap into their emotions.”
When a film student makes a speech, a classmate videotapes the performance. It’s later watched and critiqued — and the results can be surprising.
Johnston said some performances can be mind-blowing when they happen right in front of you, yet seem to miss something when watched later on film. Conversely, some actors don’t make a huge impression live, but really shine on camera.
It’s part of the mystery of what happens when a three-dimensional image is captured in 2-D, said Johnston. “Some folks all of a sudden really pop on camera,” which generally flattens likenesses. This can make angular, slim people seem more substantial and be unflattering to more rounded figures or faces.
At six-foot-two, Johnston appears taller and lankier in real life than on TV.
“The camera also sees everything all of the time — which is something that human eyes are not capable of,” he added.
Johnston had no ambition to be on camera while growing up on a Ponoka-area farm and ranch. “I wanted to be a lawyer,” he said, but fell a credit short at the University of Alberta.
Johnston remembers asking an academic advisor which was the easiest arts course that didn’t require homework. She told him acting, so he enrolled and was immediately hooked.
He’s built up more than 70 credits over the years, including the theatrical film September Dawn with Jon Voight (Johnston played wagon train leader Capt. John Fancher). He also appeared in such televised movies as Supervolcano and Touch the Top of the World, as well as many TV shows, including DaVinci’s Inquest (Fire Marshall Sid Fleming), MythQuest (Detective Saybrook), Traders (Ben Sullivan), and Jake and the Kid (Jake Trumper).
Johnston hasn’t heard yet whether Heartland will be renewed for another season. If it is, he will have to start growing his Jack Bartlett moustache in early March to have it ready for shooting in May.
“It takes six or seven weeks to get that moustache camera ready. I’m starting to feel like the moustache is its own character ... I just love shaving it off!” he said with a laugh.
Meanwhile, Johnston is enjoying his stint at RDC. While he previously taught two-day acting workshops, he feels regular three-hour daily classes are much more conducive to learning. “An intensive (workshop) gives you so much (information) so fast, it’s hard to retain it all.”
This way, the actors have some “incubation time” to think about what they’ve learned and put it into practice.
Since film directors expect actors to do their thing in front of the camera with little guidance, “my goal is to get these young actors to understand completely what the final product needs to be, so they feel comfortable and confident in front of a camera.”
RDC Motion Picture Arts acting instructor Larry Reese knows Johnston as a friend and colleague from various film sets.
Reese said the veteran Alberta actor is very generous with his time and talents, and believes his MPA students appreciate getting to spend a whole term with an instructor with so much hands-on experience in the world of films and television.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com