An actor who was born and raised in Prince George is taking a bad-guy role in the action drama movie Fronteras, which was recently released.
Cortez Chappell, who used to be a baseball player, found his way onto the stage after taking an improv class at university.
He moved away from baseball entirely and went all in with performing and, while on the set of Fronteras, was working on his masters in film studies.
Chappell was raised on a farm just outside of Prince George and he said it taught him a lot about a strong work ethic.
"However hard you work is how far you'll go," Chappell said. "That's what Prince George taught me."
He spent three years at a California university and then went to Arizona State University when his parents bought a place down there.
"I wanted to be close to my mom and dad," Chappell said. "That was my way to reconnect with them. I did that for a year and in that year I found acting. After the improv class I garnered a sense of confidence in myself for the first time outside of baseball that I'd ever had. I hadn't really done anything else but baseball for the first 21 years of my life so it was new to be so confident in something right away and I decided to just run with that."
In 2016, Chappell spent the summer studying acting at an academy in Hollywood.
"And then I just started to look for acting gigs," Chappell said. "I got my first gig in a short film called Mind Over Matter, which was a student film that really propelled me to Fronteras."
The full-length feature film is about a Mexican border patrol agent who lives in the U.S.
"And so he is on the U.S. side of the wall," Chappell said. "He's protecting U.S. citizens from potential illegal border crossings and drug trafficking and what not. It's a character study of what it would be like to be pulled from both sides."
Chappell's character is Shane Estes who is the second from the lead antagonist of the film named Ivan Sloane, who is played by Steven Sean Garland, he said.
"He is absolutely phenomenal in the film," Chappell said. "He's an even more phenomenal person. He and I have grown really close since filming since we housed together in Tucsan, Arizona. That was five weeks of us living together after having just met, so we got pretty close, pretty fast. That friendship has meant a lot to me. I was studying for my masters while filming the movie and Steve was a big voice in my ear trying to motivate me every day and keep me focused on that."
Chappell said when making a movie so topical in the current socio-political culture as immigration is, especially in the U.S., it's good to address it with the seriousness the subject requires but then during the off time, it's important to keep things light and loose.
As for his future, he's looking for more acting opportunities but as long as he can keep working in the film industry, he said he'll be happy.
The movie is available on select cable providers like Comcast, Directv and Verizon, as well on digital platforms like iTunes, Amazon Video and Google Play.
For more information about the film visit the Fronteras Facebook page.
