Ferreira Fest 027

Published March 2012
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All newsletters up to Ferreira Fest 44 (including this one) used an off-site image storage system that is now unfortunately defunct.
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It’s the 20th of the month, and that means it’s time for Ferreira Fest, the monthly celebration of the acting career of Louis Ferreira (Justin Louis)! Grab a free pineapple drink at the bar and come on in! We have breaking news about a new role, interviews, sound clips and transcripts, your questions answered, and pictures Louis wanted to share. Welcome!

TOUCH

First off – great news! Louis has just finished filming a guest role on the new Kiefer Sutherland hit series “Touch“. I will keep this as spoiler-free as I can! The episode should air in late April or early May – more details when the production team officially releases them. If you haven’t checked out the show, give it a try – check out the Touch Website for more info. You will see Louis the way you’ve never seen him before, and he is thrilled and honored to have played the part. If you watch the show you might be able to guess why this part was so special to him. And of course after it airs you can fire away with your questions with an email!

DANCING STILL

The short film Louis did last month (working title “For Now”) has also completed production and we hope to get a download for you in a little bit. It has been renamed “Dancing Still” and you can read up on it on Louis’ IMDb page. Incidentally, it’s Louis’ 100th credit on IMDb, making the episode of “Touch” the first one in his second batch of one hundred credits! Also, Louis’ ranking on IMDb is up for the second week in a row!

CON NEWS

Sadly, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that Louis will be at Dragon*Con this year, due to the guest invitation policy which generally works in a two year rotation. But it’s not final yet, and we might just get lucky still – you never know! He is, however, planning to go to FedCon in Düsseldorf in Germany in May 2013 (the schedule is not up on their website yet!). Time to plan that European vacation you’ve always dreamed about, and of course our European party guests can rejoice, since Düsseldorf is a lot closer than Atlanta! A word of caution: please remember as you make your plans that his presence at any con is never guaranteed until he’s actually there. Filming always takes precedence, so if a part comes up he will do that instead, so please be sure to always make alternate arrangements in case this happens.

WEBSITES

W have updated Louis’ Wikipedia page – check it out some time, we think it’s pretty snazzy now with tons of references and links. The Folks at Stargate Solutions have also updated their Louis page – please let them know you appreciate it.

MEET THE GANG

This month, Louis wanted to share thoughts and pictures of his pets. He would like everyone to post pictures of their pets in the comments below so he can “visit” them! If you have trouble posting a picture of your pet, please send an email to , and we will assist you.

So here’s Louis, talking about his four-legged children. A million thanks to Eszter for the great transcript!

LF = Louis Ferreira
FF = Ferreira Fest

Listen to the sound file here:

LF: Yeah, yeah. And he is completely my son’s, Aidan’s disposition.

FF: It’s really funny.

LF: Then I have Giancarlo. Who is my—Charlie is six. Giancarlo is my five-year old Pugapoo, whose got the “Puss in Boots” eyes.

It’s like an attack. He is on several occasions—on several occasions I thought he was going to break the screen as he smashes his face right into it.

FF: Oh, my god.

LF: One of the funniest videos I have is him and me watching “Marley and Me” on my laptop and him literally trying to bite the dog through the screen and repeatedly bashing his head against the computer screen. So anybody who sees that just thinks that it’s fun—and it’s the cutest, funniest thing in the world, but he will go, he just goes nuts.

LF: … but I think like any parent when you have the baby…

FF: Oh, of course.

LF: …the baby gets the extra love for the first year or so. So I mean that love—I’m in the honeymoon phase with Billie.

LF: No, so I’m just like and he goes just like occasionally he’ll be sitting there and I’m like “oh what you got there? It’s a mouse!” It’s one of those kind of things, you know, but he is the coolest, chilliest cat I’ve ever met in my life.

FF: And he means so well, you know…

LF: He is amazing and he does mean well. He will–if I take a nap, he wraps himself around my head, literally from my shoulder to shoulder, so that I have what looks like some sort of crown, golden crown, because he is a tabby and he would just stay there and purr. I love him and I love all my pets, and I’m so grateful for them, especially now being here alone in a town in a situation that I told myself I’d never be back in, which is be an actor in LA by myself. My daughter is in Toronto, my son’s in Vancouver, it’s just—thank God and I’m so grateful for these animals in my life.

FF: They’re our children, you know.

LF: They are. They absolutely are. That’s just it. Some people don’t get that. I’ve only been blessed. And we go on a hike every day, just about every day, I’d say we average 5 times a week, and we go off to this place Fryman Canyon in California where lots of dogs go for walks with their owners, but I am able to take them on a back route, which I take them off the leash and they get to feel free which is the most amazing part because, you know, I get the leash law, but they don’t wanna be on leashes just like we wouldn’t wanna be on leashes.

FF: Right.

LF: So they really enjoy the back route and they just get to run around and play and they’re amazing. They really are my family.

FF: Yeah.

LF: So you are. Here is my answer for all my pups.

FF: Ah!

LF: Just vanish. So it’s a very frustrating gift because many a time over the six weeks when we were together me and Sawyer were a search party for what we call Willow— basically her nickname is Dora the Explorer.

FF: Aha. Aha.

LF: …because she will just take off at a, you know it’s crazy like from one second to the next. It’s like “Where did Willow—oh, no!” She keeps managing to escape.

FF: But I mean, you know, they sort of choose when they come to you. I mean who can resist those eyes.

LF: Oh absolutely. Giancarlo’s got, Giancarlo’s got the “Puss in Boots” eyes. Anyway, he’s got those eyes that he can do it. And you know I mean they go everywhere I go, they are here now right by me. You know I go get up and go to bed and read and they come. Two of them sleep in the bed with me, Billie and Giancarlo, and Charlie is right there.

FF: It’s also nice. I mean they do structure your day in a certain way, because they like their routine and you can sort of build your day around it, which is kind of nice to say, “Well, this is when the dog does this.”

LF: Yes, it is. And it’s a blessing, you know. I used to panic when I didn’t work. Really, I was like, “Where is the next job? Oh, my god, I will never work again!” I don’t have that at all. Quite the opposite. I so appreciate having time to really focus on the things that matter and that’s sort of how I live my life now. You know, if the creative thing happens it’s because it’s meant to be and I don’t chase it anymore. So, I’m really coming into something quite different for myself, which is nice.

FF: Yeah. It’s good when you get to that point and have…

LF: Yeah, because it can be very frustrating otherwise and that’s just it, you know.

SCREEN CAPS

This month we have for you screenshots from the movie “Scenes of the Crime” which has been airing a lot on STARZ lately, so if you live in the US and you get premium cable channels, check it out. Beware – the last page of images contains major spoilers for the movie! Thanks for the great caps, Kimmy!

PHOTOS

Super sleuth Agi has found a few great pictures online that you might want to check out:

ASK LOUIS

On Playing Everett Young

Listen to the sound file here:

Q: How do you portray a serious character such as Young? What is your thought process? Are you satisfied with your portrayal or is there anything that you wish could have done differently?

LF: I was looking forward to the transformation of Young when I first started. The whole idea was that Young didn’t want to be on the mission. He’d messed up personally, he was just getting to that place where you sort of find in your life where the priorities are. What’s more important: career or family? And his family had been compromised. But – he’s been a victim of his own training. This is what happens to so many people, so for me Young was a man who was his own worst enemy in that growing up and being trained, you know, with the military background, and what he would have gone through. And then getting into a job and having been probably really fantastic at it. And at some point when he was getting close to retirement he was realizing he was going to lose his wife. I think he started the initial project at Icarus in a very unhappy mode, so when this particular incident happened, with the Stargate and being on the Destiny, what you saw was a shell of a man trying to do his job in the way that was the best that he could. There still was disciplinary action, he still was very much a leader, but he wasn’t there to impress anybody or be liked by anybody or try to make friends. He was trying to get those people home and very quick to die… he was able to, and felt very vulnerable, and he was really at the beck and call of – not the beck and call, but the mercy of Rush who, he saw right away, had his own agenda. So it’s a very frustrating position to be in when you’re used to being the man who is able to control and lead, and now you’re in a situation where you really don’t have the skills to do so, and that’s why his whole dynamic with Eli was as important as it was.

But the journey of the show was always the intention that Young would end up being very far away from where we first met him, and so that transition in my opinion was just starting to break a little bit. He kinda had to hit rock bottom first before he realized it might have been feelings there for TJ after the fact and after the divorce that might have been something they might have explored. There were times where all of a sudden we saw him lightening up, and that was always part of the role, where the acceptance was gonna come into play, and they also knew that they had some comedic chops in me as an actor, and that was gonna start coming into the character. We just never got to that point, which will forever be my own personal tragedy. But at the same time, because of that, what I am very happy about is that I stayed true to Young within the time frame that we were given.

FF: Yes. The whole thing about Universe was that it was never so much about the story as such, but how the characters changed.

LF: Oh, absolutely, oh yeah.

FF: It’s just such a character-driven drama and that’s what was so fascinating about it.

LF: And you gotta remember again, I go back to this and I’ve said this many times, Carlyle and I, Bobby Carlyle and I were not interested, and I don’t mean this in any way to put down the first two shows, because first of all I was a big fan of SG-1, I loved Richard Dean Anderson and I loved that show, but for us as actors, it’s really not that exciting when you’re going and doing the third installment of the same show. You’re like – you’re now the third string, you’re not the team who started it off.

I am to this day nothing but proud of the fact that they went a different direction with something that had worked for fifteen years. That takes an incredible amount of gumption, because in our industry, people love to repeat. So I was very very pleased that not only did Brad [Wright] and Robert [Cooper] say they were going to do a very different type of Stargate, but the fact that they did. And that’s what pleased Bobby and I.

So I would have rather taken two years of what we did and be proud of the effort and the attempt to create something different than to have gone on and done like five years of the same show that has been done. And that’s just – whether that’s a little bit of ego, or that’s because creatively you wanna do something – you don’t wanna go, oh, I’m playing the Richard Dean Anderson role or the Joe Flanigan role on the next Stargate. That was not a deal… What you want to do is – I did the Stargate that attempted to be the darker edgier version. And maybe the problem was in fact that it was attached to the first two Stargates that made it what people couldn’t accept at the end of the day. Which is fine, in retrospect.

I know that Bobby and myself and the entire cast and crew, beyond of being proud of it, we were so blessed to have each other through those three years of our lives because we had such a wonderful experience together as a family, which is also so much a part of it. You’re spending 50, 60 hours a week with these people. You’re spending more time with these people than you do with your own family, so to have had the experience that we had, and to know that I was on the helm at some level as Papa Smurf still to this day makes me nothing but proud, and you know it’s funny, Peter Kelamis was talking to me the other day, he was checking out some of the shows and he goes “I have to find something for my demo”, and he goes “Man, I really thought the show was great and I loved it and we did great work.” And so that’s kind of the overall feeling we all have, that anyone who has been associated with that show has, with that experience, which is way better than “wow, we did the show for 6 years, and it was hell”.

FF: Yeah, exactly.

LF: We were very blessed.

On Focus

Listen to the sound file here:

Q: Acting requires a large degree of concentration. How do you keep yourself focused and in the moment?

LF: I think it depends on the character; I find that with great material it happens a little quicker. The challenge happens when you’re doing things that are less challenging for you. In other words, if you’re reading a great book you’re into it, and therefore you tend to – it’s a better, easier reading and in that way it works the same way; if it’s a book you kinda gotta struggle through, it requires a lot more concentration. What I really do is I try to apply – it becomes a skill, one of those things where after a certain amount of times you realize that you’re able to, you’ve developed certain skills with your memory and your mind that allow you to be able to [do it]. I’ve always been able to quickly memorize, because when I was in grade school I wasn’t a great student. When it came to studying for exams I would memorize textbooks, and I’d end up getting a 95 but really I’d learned nothing.I would literally sit in my room, take 8-12 hours and memorize a textbook cover to cover and then go and do my high school exams and be like “wow, look at those marks” and people wouldn’t know that it was just the fact that I was able to memorize. So that little skill that I had as I was growing up in my little Jane and Finch neighborhood paid off big time at some point because I was able to memorize well. Again, when you shoot a film or a series, what’s more important, the part that’s interesting in concentrating is that you understand the story arc because you shoot everything out of sequence.

So, you know, you’re gonna have time to learn the lines. You might do 7, 8, 9 pages of dialog a day. It’s not like you’re doing the entire piece. That’s why I’m impressed with people who do soap operas. They shoot entire episodes in a day, sometimes two, I’ve heard, so you really gotta be on the ball with memorizing there. But when you’re doing a series… The bigger the budget the less you sort of do, cause the more time they take, and that’s the irony. If you do an independent film, you get fifty thousand and in eight days you’re just going going going, but if you’re doing a huge film with a big time executive producer, they take their time. And they take their time because they can, so these are all factors that play into a lot of that question. I hope I’ve answered the question.

On Odd Jobs

Listen to the sound file here:

Q: During the off times you’ve had over the years, what did you do to make ends meet? Patrick Gilmore laid bricks, but what did/do you do?

LF: I’ve been very very lucky as far as when I started acting I didn’t have a lot, but saying that, I started working when I was 9, so between the ages of 9 and 16 I had many jobs. I worked on a farm, a tomato farm, at 9, I worked in a shoe factory when I was 11, I worked in a metal factory cleaning toilets when I was 10, now these are all serious jobs. I worked at an upholstery company where my brother and sister and other brother and sister still work to this day 31 years later.

I worked at Sears, I worked at Mac’s, which is like a 7-11 in Toronto. I worked at… The job that I had, when I started acting, I worked at a preschool with kids, I would do the afternoon programs, so I would hang out with the kids for 3, 4 hours, and I remember one of the first shows I had was called “Night Heat”, so I’d have to work all day and then go shoot all night.

And then my favorite job that I had ever had, and I would do it tomorrow, I was a karaoke host, probably between the ages of 19 and 22 or 23, while I was acting, and I would basically host 3 or 4 times a week, the karaoke nights, and that was probably the greatest non-acting job that I had, just because a. I love singing and b. it was about people who love to sing and didn’t necessarily sing great but we had a great time in that environment.

On Pranks

Listen to the sound file here:

Q: Did your kids inherit any of your prankster genes? And if so, do you have any cool stories of pranks they’ve played on their good ole Dad? (SA = Sawyer)

LF:  Well. It’s great that Sawyer’s here cause I can ask her. Do you remember anything, Sawyer? Have you pulled any pranks on… what did you guys do? Remind me.

SA: Well, there was the time we bought the fake lottery tickets, remember?

LF: Oh, yeah! They got me, we were in Victoria BC and they picked up this fake lottery ticket and the way it worked was that you were gonna be a guaranteed winner. But I thought it was some legitimate ticket that you get at a store, you know you pay two bucks for them? I was in Victoria and they were all around me and we’re all scratching different cards, and they were pretending, you know, nothing here and nothing there, and then I was like (shouts) “I just won 10,000 dollars! I just won 10,000 dollars, oh my gosh!” And they start laughing their butts off and I’m like, what’s with you guys… and what happened then?

SA: You were talking to Aidan and he said you’re stupid, it’s not real.

LF: (laughs) Yeah, I got called stupid by my own children! They set me up to call me stupid, how mean was that? I fell for it hook, line and sinker, that’s for sure! (laughs)

FF: Well they learned from the best – look at it that way.

LF: That’s for sure. I’m the one who pulled pranks on them… (to Sawyer) Can you think of another one we did? We had so many at the farm, there were so many things at the farm…

SA: You threw golf balls at us, once, in the tent!

LF: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they were… we would set up tents all the time on the farm property and sleep in the tents because it felt like it was camping and it was kind of exciting. And I would love to pretend and I would always say “Be careful, cause you never know what’s out there, regardless that it’s the farm, so you guys be very careful!” I left the new tent in the middle of the night, it was kind of a Greg Allen thing in the middle of the night where I was starting either throwing stuff at the tent, so things were rattling or making noise or making strange noises or throwing things to just rattle them a little bit.

SA: You scared us so bad the first time, you were throwing golf balls at the tent and we were screaming inside the tent cause we thought something was attacking us!

LF: You thought you were being attacked by an animal! (laughs) That’s funny!

On Aidan’s Humor

Listen to the sound file here:

LF: Aidan, as far as pranks… yeah, Aidan, he’s got a very wry wry sense of humor, my son. It’s very unique, it’s almost… oh yeah, he will mess with my head, he’s frustrating me, he’ll be relentless.

For about 4 years of his life, he said what he wanted to do when he was grown up, and this is I’m talking like between 12 and 16, he said “I want to be a duck.” And we could be talking to someone who’s in the consulate, and they would say “So, what are your plans for the future?” and he would say “I’m hoping to be a duck.” Made me go “Aidan, come on, man, be serious.” And he’d say “My dad has yet to understand that I really want to be a duck.” He goes, “I don’t understand why I’m just not accepted. I want to be a duck.” And I have to deal with this kid telling full-out adults that his whole thing in life is to want to be a duck. It drove me nuts! (laughs). It drove me nuts.

But secretly I think it gave him great pleasure, to know that he could rile me so easily. Yeah, so that’s Aidan’s kind of humor, he should do stand-up comedy but in a very sort of, he’s got a very wry sense of humor. He’s an interesting kid. Aidan can really crack me up and what’s interesting about him is that he has developed – from a very early age –  he doesn’t necessarily care about it at all, and now he’s doing background work on “Once upon a time” with Bobby Carlyle which is kinda fun. (to Sawyer) He’s Rumpelstiltskin. Oh, you gotta watch that show. You’ve seen it? Bobby’s Rumpelstiltskin.

Anyway, so he’s done background work, but he has the most uncanny ability to mimic and imitate, which is something I do well. Aidan’s ability to mimic and imitate is from the get-go. He used to do Cosby monologues when he was 7. He would stand in the garage on his stool with a light, and he would do a 6, 7 minute monologue to a T where I was just like, this kid is incredible.

A Greeting in French

Listen to the sound file here:

Q: A question for laughs from the French fans, I know you do not speak French, but do you know a few words to say to us? 

LF: Bonjour, salut, c’est Louis Ferreira, merci beaucoup a tous mes amis en France. Merci beaucoup – j’aime ҫa. Je m’appelle Louis Ferreira et merci beaucoup a tout le monde dans la France. Les personnes de France sont fantastique. Les Franҫais, les personnes Franҫais – tout le monde Franҫais sont magnificent, très chic, sexy; yeah. Sexy! Très sexy. (laughs)

(Hello, this is Louis Ferreira, many thanks to all my friends in France. Many thanks – I like that. My name is Louis Ferreira and thank you to everybody in France. The French people are fantastic. All the French people are magnificent, very chic, sexy. Very sexy!)

On Defining Moments

Listen to the sound file here:

FF: What was the defining moment that made you decide you wanted to be an actor?

LF: I don’t think that I had a defining moment. I think that I was kid who grew up, like I’ve said many times, we were growing up very poor, my mom and I, and in the neighborhood where I was working job after job after job making 5, 4 bucks, whatever minimum wage was back then, and I knew that I wanted to get out of that neighborhood. And when I found an opportunity that presented itself in the acting, I know that when I was on the set I felt really alive and it made me feel excited; I know when I watched “The Outsiders”, that movie was something that I was like wow, I would have loved to be in that movie. I saw myself as an outsider, I think at the time and so really related to a lot of the, a lot of that film, I thought it was brilliant, and look at all the guys who went on that beat the superstars out kind of film.

But as far as defining moments, it grew within the process, I was one of the kids that was lucky enough to really learn on film. I made a lot of mistakes. It was my first, I had no clue what I was doing but I got hired to be a lead in a movie, and that was 1984 and that was my first job and that was in Edmonton. And there I was being a paid actor, and it was kinda crazy and so, but then along the way I would do a project, I did something called “Common Ground” with director Mike Newell, and I remembered going, wow, this is important what we’re saying here, and that meant something to me, you know, and then you realize, oh, I can touch people with my performance and have an impact and then people relate. And all that stuff to me became very fresh, I was very much learning and connecting dots as I grew, and as I journeyed through my own life, trying to piece together my childhood, my past, all these moments, defining moments would happen, not necessarily one or two specific moments but it’s almost like – even the thing that I just finished I can say that this was a defining moment for me.

It was a moment for me, it was a moment where I got to sort of go, you know, the universe saying, it may be hard right now because you were gone for 7 years and yes, it’s a little “out of sight out of mind”, and yes, you now are dealing now with a different name, and these are all factors as to why I think things have taken a turn for me. But it’s the universe also saying “Good on you!” and “This is what will define you.” And here’s a great little example of a defining moment for me going, and me looking and going “Thank you for this gift.” Because that’s how I feel about it.

On Character Types: Two Wolves

Q: Do you prefer to play the roles of good guys or villains?

(Louis answers this question by quoting a short story that is very dear to him, and he wanted to end this issue of Ferreira Fest with this quote, to give you something to think about, in lieu of the usual message.)

Two Wolves: Life Explained LF: One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside the soul. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?” The old Cherokee simply replied: “The one you feed.”

Here’s to good eating.

And that, dear Friends, is about it for this month! Thanks for visiting often! Be sure to follow us on “X” / Twitter for all the Louis news you can handle and TV reminders!

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We hope to see you all next month!