Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with the actor Ely Henry, who was a camper with us from 2003-2008. Ely began his career as an stand up comedian, actor and writer in Toronto, before moving down to Los Angeles in 2012. Since then, he has had recurring roles on Suburgatory and Twisted, a lead role in the pilot for Cabot College, as well as lead roles in Zeroes, and an Indie film showing on Netflix (US) entitled Some Freaks. Most recently, he created the voice for a character in the Warner Animation Group movie, Small Foot.

I began by asking Ely about his move down to Los Angeles, something many actors dream of doing. Had it worked out the way he intended? Turns out, Ely landed some promising roles within the first month of moving south, something that helped mitigate the culture shock of living in a city unlike anywhere else in the world. But life wasn’t all roses, and he quickly realised that career success doesn’t always mean happiness. “To be happy,” Ely said, “you have to work at other things, too.” Excellent advice from someone in an industry that can demand a single-minded approach.

I’d checked out the trailer of Some Freaks prior to chatting with Ely, and it intrigued me, so I asked about his role in the movie. Some Freaks deals with the relationship between an overweight girl and a boy with only one eye, and charts changes in their relationship when they reunite after several months. Ely plays the main character’s best friend, a ‘nerdy teenager’ far more complex than this stereotype suggests. ‘I worked at the movie with a real hunger’, Ely told me, though it was a challenge to portray situations he had never experienced in real life.

Ely also voices a character in the newly-released animated movie, Small Foot, a job about as different from Some Freaks as is possible. He initially worked on the movie for 3 years, ‘doing scratch’. What does this mean? While the script editors and animators are at work, actors are hired temporarily to give voice to the characters; these voices are then replaced by those of famous actors, at the final stage. To his surprise, however, Ely was kept on to voice a character in the movie – something that rarely happens. In addition to creating the voice for the character, Ely had a GoPro record his face, so the animators could work with his expressions. His name appears right below Danny De Vito’s, in the credits.

There’s no doubt Ely is on the road to success as an actor, so I had to ask the Big Question: did his years at Centauri contribute to this? Ely didn’t hesitate. Improv, he said, was a skill he first developed at camp, and this had proven essential to his acting, comedy and writing career. Like so many campers, Ely spent his summers at Centauri trying to figure out who he was. School was hard, and whenever he struggled, his mom would remind him there were others in the world just like him – only maybe not at school – at Centauri. With us, Ely felt free to celebrate his individuality, something that is essential to an acting career. In the industry, he often hears there is no other person like him, and he adds, “Centauri gave me the confidence to be myself.”

Is there any advice he would give to a current Centauri camper hoping to make it as an actor? This was my final question for Ely, and his reply was so important, so profound, that I’m quoting it here exactly:

“Mental health wise, do what you need to keep yourself healthy. If you want to do well in your career, you need to do well as yourself. Make yourself a priority – not just your career. Live your life. Art is a comment on life, and if you’re not living, you have nothing to comment on. As for career advice, be good at what you do, but also be a good person. Sometimes a talented actor is passed over in favour of someone who is better to work with. You spend a lot of time with people when you make a film and no one will hire someone they don’t like.”

Check out The IMDB info for Ely here!

 

Julie Hartley
Director
Centauri Arts