Cameron Jones: Skin In the Game

Talented actor, writer and producer Cameron Jones might make his craft look effortless but behind his credits which include Shortland Street, The Hobbit and an NBC/Warner Bros TV film/pilot ‘Christmas of Many Colors’, a story about Dolly Partons’ childhood, is an unfathomable amount of hard work and resilience.

Even Cameron’s one man theatre show High Rise, involved a year of interviews as part of the research that went into writing it and it took 150 rejections during Cameron’s time in LA before he landed the Dolly Parton gig. We talk to Cameron about his Hollywood lessons, the power of resilience, the magic of storytelling and his work with collagen brand, Adashiko.

Images by Nathan Hall

What’s keeping you busy?

I’m just finishing up on a film at the moment. It’s an American romcom that’s shooting over here due to Covid. They’ve actually adapted the script so they can shoot in New Zealand.
Anna Hutchinson is the lead on that. It’s being shot on locations around various parts of rural Auckland. It’s just good to be working, not only working in general, but working as an actor at this time. I’m feeling very, very lucky. Very happy.

Is that something that you can thank Covid for, that you’ve got this role?

If I want to be selfish, yeah, I could. That’s the irony I’ve found in the acting industry. The film or TV industry is, at the best of times in New Zealand, a hard one. The Covid situation has felt like it boosted it a little bit.

There are a lot of productions ramping up or coming here. It’s a weird thing. On one hand, you’re like, ‘Oh great. There’s lots of work.’ But on the other hand, there’s a pandemic. You don’t want to be happy, but it’s great to see so much international work coming here.

I don’t know if it’s directly because of Covid or they were coming here anyway, or a mixture of the two. There’s lots of opportunity at the moment.

Is it a little bit weird that you put all this work into breaking into the US, and then you’ve got this pandemic and it turns everything upside down, and then all of a sudden everything’s coming here?

It’s very weird and all I can do is laugh. The fact that I spent three and a half years in LA, then I came back to have some time off. Then all of a sudden a pandemic strikes and it feels like I’m busier now than I’ve been in the last few years. I can’t look too far, obviously. I feel like there’s still a lot of uncertainty with everything.

It’s important just to go day to day, to be honest, which is what I’m doing. I’m loving the fact that I’m on set. I don’t know what’s around the corner, but I’m just very day to day right now, which is probably quite a good thing.

We don’t know what’s happening in six months, no one would have known that this would’ve happened. I’m just very happy that I’ve found a groove and I’m working.

Can you describe the process of your own career pathway? When you go to LA from New Zealand, is it like going to another planet or is it part of the evolution?

I didn’t think it would be another planet, but it turned out to be another planet. I felt like it was going to be an evolution, but it definitely never got comfortable. It definitely felt like a strange world when I first got there, but that was an excitement or an allure that I had for it.

After I realised this is not quite what I thought it was and the sheen rubbed off a little bit, it did feel like another planet after a while. And then you’re asking yourself, ‘When will I acclimatise to this place or settle in?’ That never really happened.

So I thought, if I don’t feel settled or at home after four years, it’s not going to happen at all. Obviously I want to work again overseas, but if I had the choice, I’d love to be working in New Zealand. I just love New Zealand.

When the sheen rubs off on the Hollywood thing, what is it that’s under that sheen?

It’s kind of like The Wizard of Oz when the curtain gets pulled. I feel like I saw very early on the curtain get pulled and it ruined it a little bit.

They say don’t meet your heroes and I felt like that was the same thing. I just felt let down by a lot of people all the time. It just wasn’t what you think it’s going to be.

I think growing up in New Zealand, we’re very real people. If you’re an earnest and genuine person, it’s very jading when you don’t get the same back. Where I’m from, if you say you’re going to do something for someone, you do it, otherwise you don’t say it. It feels like there was a lot of talk over there, a lot of smoke and mirrors. Even the good stuff, there are so many levels to it.

It’s just a different world. I wouldn’t really know where to start in regards to feeling so lost. There was a lot of narcissism and a lot of materialism. It was just a completely different thing for me and for whatever reason, I just never seemed to click into place.

I lost sight of what I was going there originally for. I think I’ll get back there, in regards to work, but I don’t think I’ll live there again.

Can we tell our own stories here better? Can we create more films or TV here?

Can we? Absolutely. I think we have some incredible stories to tell. I think there’s a lot of New Zealand stories that are universal and that would be global stories. I think we can do that very well.

I also think we can tell international stories here and do them in New Zealand, absolutely. A hundred percent. We’ve got an incredible backdrop and we just need a few more resources in terms of studios. If all the productions came here, there probably wouldn’t be enough room, but I know that they are building bigger facilities.
There are definitely things that can be done here, just for whatever reason they’re not being done here. But they’re starting to, looking at what we’re shooting here 10 years ago compared to now, there’s a lot of big projects happening here. When I was in drama school 10 years ago, they did say the natural thing was to go to LA because that’s where everything’s done.

I don’t even think you have to go to LA anymore. You’d go to LA to meet your reps and set up your management team, but I don’t think you need to move to LA. I know a few people that have done very well and had very successful careers from booking something from their hometown.

I think it’s possible to just be here. The world’s so globalised now. You can hop on a flight and be there the next day.

You seem very grounded and very humble, particularly when you juxtapose that with the Hollywood world. How do you balance that with ambition and drive?

That’s a question that I’ve been working with myself since I left drama school and since I left New Zealand and went to LA. I just turned 30 the other day and I think I’m getting more mature and wiser with my age. I’m really enjoying going back to the guy I was when I went to drama school.

When I left drama school, I felt like the ego side of the industry took over. And that’s fine, I’m young, but for me it’s been really important and really crucial for me to go back to why I started doing this. To remember that it’s a craft and that is not about fame or recognition or popularity. It’s about serving characters.

I started doing acting classes again in LA and I started just going back to why I do this and being focused on the craft and looking at what actors emulate that. The guys I look up to; Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Marlon Brando back in the day, obviously Robert De Niro, these guys that could cash in on their looks or whatever, but they don’t. They’re all leading men who really focus on the work.

I want to follow that and make sure that nothing ever comes before the work and the work comes first.

If we go back 10 years to a simpler time, what was the catalyst for you to get into this industry? What was the moment that you knew that this was the rest of your life?

I did a play in high school and at that point, all I did drama for was to get out of other classes. I didn’t really take it seriously. I must have had something because the drama teacher would cast me in shows.
We did this play and I had to play a Muslim who was also a homosexual, which was two worlds that I had absolutely zero idea about. Two worlds that, as a teenager and a high school student, were very confronting to me, especially from rural Hawke’s Bay. They were very interesting ideas to grasp.

I could have – especially with the homosexual side of things – played the farce of it, played the joke. I think that’s a way to not be vulnerable. For whatever reason, I didn’t want to do that. I really wanted to be genuine and just step into the shoes of both those worlds. I tackled it full force and really did my research and really just tried to get to the core of those characters.

I realised that you don’t play a religion and you also don’t play a sexual preference. They’re not different people. No different to if I was told to play someone that likes apples and someone that likes oranges. It’s still the same person. They just have a different preference.

I did that show and it really just blew me away. For me, I just love telling stories, but also being authentic to those stories. I love the idea of climbing into someone else’s shoes and seeing everything from their perspective and making sure that we justify those stories.

It’s a very different world now and I would not want to take a role of someone in a minority group away from someone from a minority group, for obvious reasons. But for me, that moment back then had a very profound impact on me in terms of being real. Acting wasn’t just about being the clown, it was about really being genuine.

That’s what we’re looking for. I just found storytelling was essential for us to understand not only each other, but also the world around us. That’s one job that won’t be taken away by robots.

In your world, It must be difficult to plan out what’s happening next year, let alone the year after that, but that’s the world that a lot of us are having to comprehend at the moment.

To be honest, I think that’s why it hasn’t bothered me. It hasn’t freaked me out as much as people I know. I’m just so used to it. Since I left drama school, the only exception has been Shortland Street where I had two years of consistent work and paychecks coming through.
It took me a year and a half in LA before I booked my first major film. I counted the auditions and it was 152 auditions before I got that yes. The thing that most people don’t realise is it’s not like you just have the big break. You get so close so many times.

There were two or three times where I got down to the wire for a project. One of them was about six months into being in LA and I went in for the final audition, which they call a screen test, and it’s down to me and two other guys. You sign the contract before you go into the room, so I saw the dollars. I saw the money that I would potentially make for the series.

It’s weird, because you’re the same person, it’s not like a normal career path where you grow as a person, as you’re growing up the company. I’m still the same person, but the decision could be a range of things; not the right look, maybe not the right height, maybe not the right look against the female lead, so many reasons. It’s really disheartening when you don’t know why, because you can’t improve on that.

If you’re in a company and you’re told you didn’t get the promotion because X, Y, and Z, you need to work on this, that’s fine because then you go away and you work on it. With acting, they just tell you you didn’t get it and you don’t know what to do.You’re left in this limbo.
It’s just been years and years and years of constant inconsistency and massive highs and massive lows. One minute you’re going to the Emmys and the next minute you’re going to Costco to bulk up on rice and tuna because you don’t have enough money. It’s just a weird thing.

Unless you’re in it, no one really understands that struggle. The hardest thing is just having a normal relationship, you can’t plan holidays, you can’t plan ahead, you can’t plan where you’re going to be in six months. You can’t plan to go on a holiday with your girlfriend because you don’t know how much money you’re going to have.
It’s a really draining industry and profession. But then you get a job and all that slips away. I think that’s why you stay with it because when you’re on set or when you’re on stage, you’re in another world.
The only thing I can liken it to would be surfing. If you get a barrel and you’re in that tube, it’s like a euphoria. I feel the same with acting.
When I get into a state of mind, nothing else could beat that. I think that’s why I’m drawn to jiu jitsu, you are just incredibly present. I’m such an overthinker and a worrier, I think it’s really good to be doing activities that make me super present. Acting, jiu jitsu, surfing, you’re very present.

I understand what you’re saying in terms of that euphoria, but to go through 152 auditions before you get to the one. That’s a different level of resilience.

I always joke to myself that I’m either resilient and have good mental fortitude or I’m just stupid because there’s a fine line. Nothing is in your control. That’s the hardest thing, even with that Dolly Parton film, that was supposed to be a backdoor pilot.

It’s the first episode of a TV series and if the ratings did really well, they were going to turn into a TV series, which I would have been a lead in. The ratings went really well, so I was going, ‘Sweet, I am done. I’ve got a TV series coming up around the corner. It’s going to be great. I’m going to be in work and be doing 10 episodes next year.’
I flew back to New Zealand in the holidays and was enjoying my summer. The day before I flew back, the producer called me and said that the head of the network had pulled the pin. To this day, we don’t really know why, but the buck stops with him.

It’s frustrating because it doesn’t matter how good my performance is, that has no bearing on that decision. I don’t want to be selfish and be like, ‘You ruin my life’ or whatever, because there were so many people who were involved in that production that would have had work on the show.

It just really woke me up to the fact that it’s so out of my control. You could have done an Oscar-winning performance and that doesn’t change the outcome of that decision.

I’m trying to learn to just relinquish that because I tend to hold on to that and go, ‘What could I have done? Why didn’t this get picked up?’ That would have changed my life, being on a TV series like that. Instead I went back to 150 more auditions. Crazy or stupid, I don’t know. I’m still trying to work it out.

At this time there’ll be a lot of people that have lost the security of a really good profession. Is there any advice that you could give for that situation?

In a weird way, the silver lining is that, from COVID and from this uncertainty, I hope it opens up people’s minds to the fact that we are more than the jobs that we do. I hope people start to just really look at people for being people, because I think that’s something that I really struggled with, with so much rejection.

Being a struggling, broke actor all the time, people judging you and going on your success, rather than who you are as a person. Let’s say Steven Spielberg offers me a lead role in a new film and my life just changes completely. I’m still the same person that I was today. My life has changed in terms of the money I’m making and my career is now changed, but I’m still the same person.

But that doesn’t matter to other people, other people don’t see it like that. I know pilots who have lost their jobs, who are now working in supermarkets. They’re still the same person and I just really hope that people wake up to the fact that we need to just look past that and not care about those things as much.

I feel like people, especially with social media, care so much about what they look like and what they’re driving and who they’re with and what restaurant they’re at. It doesn’t matter. We’re just trying to see the person for who they are. I think that’s an important thing.
One piece of wisdom I could probably translate to the COVID situation is just to be more present. It’s really hard and I’m still working on it, but I’m trying to be absolutely present. Not thinking about the man I was yesterday. If life started today, who would you be? That’s an important thing I’m trying to focus on at the moment.

I could focus on the three and a half years I had an LA, where I had some success, and I could be like, ‘Oh well, it was three and a half years of struggle and that makes you who you are.’ Well, what happens if I just reset today? What would I do today if I really focused on that being the start of my life?

I think that’s an important way to look at it because you are far more opportunistic and you seize the day a lot more, as opposed to bringing in all your baggage. If you just focus on today being day dot, how are you going to treat today?

You would attack it a little bit more. Just be present because we cannot predict what’s going to happen in a week, a month, six months, definitely not a year. This virus has changed the world and this has changed a lot of people’s lives and it still will. It’s still going on.
New Zealand just happens to be lucky that we had some leadership and we were able to minimise the effects, but we’re still going to feel the effects from a global point of view. There’s no way we could escape the global economic ramifications.

We just need to be mindful of that and be present and just appreciate every day and go, ‘Okay, well today I’m going to work on today.’
There could be another pandemic in six months that wipes out everybody. What’s the point in trying to plan 10 years ahead when you don’t even know what’s going to happen next month? I see people just being really grateful for their families and for their time and for the basic things. Hopefully that keeps happening.

I feel like it’s been a bit of a reset button for everybody, but I would suggest to people to just try and stay present.

If you’re eating dinner, don’t be thinking, ‘Oh, what am I going to watch tonight on Netflix? What am I going to do?’ Because you’re not being present. Enjoy that meal. Enjoy that walk, enjoy that time. Even if you’re sitting in traffic, what are you doing? Listen to your favorite podcast. Enjoy that moment. Enjoy being in traffic.

What’s around you? Try and tune into what you see, what you hear, what you smell, all those senses. If you focus on those sensors, you become incredibly present and you can’t be unhappy when you’re present. It’s just impossible.

It’s changed my outlook, thinking like that. We are the man we are right now. We’re the person we are right now. We’re not the person we were yesterday. Yes, that comes into it, that has built our character, but our character is not defined by who we were yesterday. It’s what we’re doing right now.

What are our actions right now? That’s what’s defining us because that’s going to be our past. If we keep living in our past, we’re never going to be present.

Can you Talk about your work with Adashiko?

I use their products and I’ve done a campaign for them. I made it very clear from the start that I’m not an influencer on social media. I’m not going to do that kind of stuff. I’ve worked with them on a campaign and I told them, ‘Look, I’ll only endorse products if I believe in it.’ I used their products and I genuinely wholeheartedly went, ‘These are awesome.’

I haven’t used collagen products before. I like the products. I use the products. I talk about the products, regardless of whether I get money or not. I genuinely like what they’ve done. I like the brand. I like the fact that it’s run by a team of really awesome women who are just kicking ass and just doing it the way they want to do it. I love the fact they’re from Hawke’s Bay.

I can definitely get behind this company because they are just representing themselves really well. The products work. I was skeptical, I’m not going to lie. I don’t usually buy into that kind of stuff, but I started using the collagen powder and the moisturiser and my skin and my hair got better and I was really happy. So I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll stand behind you guys.’ Easy.

For the acting world, that is still important, the aesthetics.

Yes, it is. I guess for males, it’s a little bit different because we can be a little bit rougher around the edges. But, the aesthetics are important and it is important to take care of yourself. No different to going to the gym and keeping in shape. You want to do that because it’s good for you and you stay healthy.

Do you notice that there’s a connection between being fit and active? Does that help the mindset as well?

In terms of acting, a hundred percent. Especially jiu jitsu. I think jiu jitsu saved my life, literally and figuratively. It definitely brought me out of some dark places in my life. With physical exercise, you can do whatever you want, but I think it’s important to do it.

Aside from the physical benefits of your body being in shape, it releases a lot of stress. It takes your mind off things. There’s a chemical reaction when you do exercise, whether that’s going for a run, going for a surf or going to the gym, lifting weights, whatever, it doesn’t matter. There’s a chemical reaction in your body that loves it.
I always feel better after a workout. I always find I’m a better person after a workout. It literally clears your mind. I love doing exercise first thing in the morning because my mind is at its clearest.

I feel like it sets me up for the day to make decisions. I think it’s paramount to having a healthy mind and making good decisions.

Does the Adashiko collagen powder help with the joint side of things as well?

Yep. Jiu jitsu puts a lot of stress on joints. I just noticed that my skin feels better, my hair feels better. I did my research and everything says that it’s good for your bones.

I feel like I get less injuries. I don’t know if that’s attributed to that or whether I’m just having a good period of not getting injured.

Any little niggly injuries I do have, like bent fingers, broken toes, I feel like they heal a lot quicker. Whether that’s collagen or not, I can’t say, but I definitely think that it’s been really good for me.

When we were talking about uncertainty before, does it help having routine in terms of the workouts?

Especially in LA, one of the only certainties I had was my training. That’s why I loved it so much. It was the one thing I knew in my day that would happen and that I knew the outcome.

I knew I could rely on that to be there every day at the same time. It wasn’t going to be subject to people’s opinions or to whatever pie in the sky thing that happens in the industry.

I knew that jiu jitsu would always be there and it’s black and white. You step on the mats, you fight someone, the better man wins. And if you don’t win, you get better. I just love that black and white, because it’s so opposite to acting.

You turn up to training and you spar and whoever’s the better man on the day will win. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and that’s what’s cool. I just needed that in my life. I needed some more certainty.