THE CHARACTER
Name: James Ackland
Age: 18
Hometown: Canberra, Australia
Appearance:From head to toe, the Australian is approximately 196 centimetres (about 6’5”), making him not the tallest man, but he was not the shortest either. To even out his height, he weighs about 106 kilograms (approximately 234 pounds). He is not heavy because of fat though, but because of the muscles he had acquired from him visiting the gym whenever he could. His brown hair is easily dyed, so it would make it easier to fit into more roles than others. With his green eyes, he could easily tell a story, and give his emotions through his eyes. When he is giving a performance, his eyes usually help tell the story and it helps give the audience a little bit more feel to the role, than just reading the lines off from memory.
On his square face, he has a Band-Aid across his nose most of the time, due to many injuries he has suffered. Whenever he is not hurt though, the Band-Aid is still across his face because it has grown to be a fairly sensitive area for him, same with his thick eyebrows. Both the bridge of his nose and his eyebrows are his weakest points, giving him the most pain when touched.
Most of his muscular body have either bruises or cuts or injury, but they were all because of him not being careful. He has been known to climb on the more dangerous sets or on trees when he was a child and gravity was not his best friend in these situations. It always brought him down whenever it could, or whenever he had a misstep. If it weren’t for his missteps, then it would be because of his own stupidity for going out and poking dangerous animals when he was a child to get the marks. It does not matter to him though. With every scar, he had a story to tell, and he actually enjoys telling them to others.
His everyday outfit consists of anything comfortable. If he could move easily in it, then he would be fine. He does not care if it is neat or not, since being neat usually constricts movement, not help movement. But that is just for rehearsals. When he is actually on stage, he would wear what is needed (though most of the time he would modify the clothes so it would suit his tastes, even if it does irritate the director and the others on set with him).
Having an accent does not help him when acting though. Sure, his Australian accent is not too thick, since it had softened when he came from Melbourne, but it was still there, and very noticeable. Sometimes it did not match what he needed, and it took away from his overall performance. He tries his best to use the local accent, but it always fails, and his real accent comes through at the worst times (especially at the very dramatic moments, or at the climax of the show). He is currently working on it though, and he hopes that he could get better at hiding his accent onstage when he needed to the most.
His right left pinkie finger is painted red in memory of his lost companion, Steve. Some people may not like it, but he refuses to wash it. He would rather lose a good role than to lose the memory of a close friend of his.
Personality:Like many actors, he is not the brightest bulb in the pack. Sure, some actors joke that actors aren’t the smartest people in the world, but James is living proof that actors are not the smartest people. He knows how to sit down and read the script and get it into his head, that was the easy part; but getting him to understand the role, and understand any situations was like pulling teeth. If someone said something to him, then he would take it in some other way (eg. If someone is interested him romantically, he would think of things in a platonic sense).
That could either be his saving trait, or the death of him, since he does not think ahead because of that. Of course, it could save him since it can confuse the other party so much that he would have a chance to escape from their wrath; however, it is more than likely to be the end of him because he does not know when to stop and think (like when he tells a father or an overprotective male to a person he is having a fling with that he is having a fling with said person). He does not mean to talk to them like that and get himself hurt, but it does happen, and he is left with a nasty mark more often than none.
Not thinking ahead also makes him fairly blunt, and he does say a lot of hurtful things to people without meaning to. When he figures it out though, he does go and apologise, but it usually does not happen since he is hardly aware of hurting someone else’s feelings at all.
Maybe because he is not aware of anyone’s feeling and because he is a dope, he does not realise that he is a womaniser. He tends to start many relationships, and in the end they all would lead to being a large affair where in the end he will get hurt physically by those he used; but boys will be boys, and if being a womaniser was part of being a boy, then being a prankster would also classify as being a boy; which is true in James’s case. He loves to prank people, but thanks to him being slow, he does take it a bit farther than most sometimes.
Adding on to that though, he is also very crude and vulgar when it comes to certain (many) things. He usually does go as far as to offend people. He does usually apologise and attempt to stop, but again, it is only if he catches it.
But the dork is not that bad. He is pretty easygoing, which helps him greatly when he is on stage or during rehearsal, since life is life and a show is just a show. It didn’t mean that he didn’t care about the show, but he doesn’t let it consume his life. Sure, at times when he is acting relaxed about the show (or too relaxed) it could freak people out, but he finds being relaxed and tolerant to anything that is thrown at him helps him adapt quicker to the situation, and when something (like a last minute script change) is thrown at him, he can get his boots on and jump into action quicker.
From his childhood, he is known to be very rebellious. He still is known to be rebellious, though not as often anymore since he is older now. Every once in a while though, he would defy the director and stage manager and do what he feels like in the production, or even when he is helping out with others he would just back away and do things his way, rather than do it how the other person wants to.
When he knows he is in danger, or his loved ones are in danger (or being taken and wooed by others), he would go into the mode of ‘lizard brain’. It doesn’t happen often, but when he does, he gets violent. It takes a while to calm him down, and usually he goes about to attack many people before calming down. At these times, it is best to isolate him or lock him in a small room until he goes back to normal.
Likes:- Cross dressing → He does like to dress as a woman, but it is because he knows he can pull it off, and he loves seeing the expression on the men and women’s faces when they find out that he is really a man when they go a little bit too far.
- Animals → He loves animals. They used to be his best friends back at home, and he is willing to admit to liking animals more than liking people.
- Beer → He loves drinking. It doesn’t help him all that much when he needs to memorise lines, but it does relax him before a show. Anyone could tell him that it does not help him, but he never listens. He just drinks whenever he wants to.
- Sex → Like most men, he loves it. He prefers it with women, but if he has to go with men, he will make do with what he has.
- Hunting → He used to love to hunt, but now he cannot do it anymore since he is nowhere near any places to hunt.
- Sweets → If you give him sweets, he’ll melt and do anything for you.
- Retractable stage knives → Who doesn’t like these?
- Steve the Koala → His buddy Steve the stuffed Koala is always with him. He talks to it as if it were alive, and he listens to it as if it really is responding to him.
Dislikes:- His little brother → His little brother always shows him up in whatever he does, and so he has grown to have an inferiority complex towards his little brother.
- Pommies → He does not hate the British per se, but they do grind his gears. Granted, he is partially British, but it does not matter. The thing he hates most is when he is mistaken for one.
- Snow → He just needs to warm up to it, since he isn’t used to the cold, wet sand.
- Isolation → He does not like to be alone, since it brings back bad memory.
Job: Actor
Experience:He was the eldest billy goat in the three billy goats gruff play back in elementary school. When he got into middle school, he took the main role in the school play
The Music Man. When high school rolled around, he got involved in the production of
A Mid Semester’s Pop Dream where he played the semi major role of Puck. After that, he managed to get into a few more school productions as minor roles, and he is still in school at the moment, doing what he could.
Extra details:He is pretty open to what he plays, and usually it surprises most on how he can manoeuvre himself into any situation to help the production out (like how he can sit in a fridge for almost an hour just for a play).
Brief History:Since he was a kid, James was always a wild child. He was never one for rules. It wasn’t a surprise that his father sent him out to a boot camp in the countryside to whoop his butt into shape. What his father did not expect though, is that going to the camp could be more harm to James than help. Though he considered it an upside, since he managed to get stronger, and he managed to gain a little friend, Steve the koala too.
When he got out two years later, he was slower and dumber than when he came in, and he had gained the mentality of what he likes to call ‘Lizard Brain’. His little friend had also died, and he was torn. Being a child and learning about death so early, he acted out quite often.
By the time he was in the fourth grade though, things seemed to slow down and became fairly normal for him… Well, other than getting in trouble for pulling more pranks than other boys. He did it to the extent where the principal had to reserve James his own seat in their room because he was constantly being sent down because the brunette was filling the role of the Class Clown.
They eventually found out that he was just looking for an outlet for his energy, and so they casted him in a pretty large part of the Three Billy Goats Gruff (the class play) to let him loosen his energy. When he found that he had a passion for being in theatres and productions, he started to get more involved when he could.
By the time he got to high school, he has had many opportunities to act. He was in several productions back in school when he was in Canberra. All too soon though, his family needed to move over to the United States of America for business, dragging him across the world to a new city.
He was disappointed at how the local high school had a lack of a drama program, so he set out to look for anywhere he could try and join. Eventually he found the Theatre of the World, and he was thrilled about it, doing whatever he could to try and audition for any roles that he could. If he did not get any roles though, he would still support the theatre; in hopes of next time he would be able to join them in their productions.
RP Sample: (( From a One on One, demonic possession role play involving an England. ))
He hadn't visited that old man in a while... Or rather, he hadn't seen him since he had been abandoned. Sure, there were the world meetings with the glances across the tables, or at the dinner parties that he did get invited to/attend, but he never got a chance to really see or speak with the man.
Yes, he had avoided the man like the Black Death that had hit Europe, but he had good reason to do so. It was for the reason that the man didn't care for him all that much in the past, or it seemed like the old fart didn't care about him in general. Well, it didn't matter anyways. He was pretty glad that he didn't give a damn. (even if he technically DID depend on the old man for a lot of supplies, even now)
He wasn't sure if it were a good or a bad thing that he depended on Arthur. Sure, there was the "family" instincts that had told him to go ahead and trust the man to NOT abandon him again, but then again, sending convicts to raise the man when he was still a child... That was a fairly low thing to do. Will he forgive the man? To a point. Will he trust the man? No way in hell. If there was one thing he had learned from criminals, was that he didn't want to trust the bloody ninny for more than he could throw him. Anything could go wrong with the rocket.
Well, he needed to visit the man anyways; though he had made every possible delay as he could. Yes, that meant heading the LONG way to get to Europe, through America and visiting his brothers for some time, before heading off to visit the blasted man. James didn't want to, but he knew that he would have to see the old man's face some time after their strange departure. After all, this was the man who educated him for how many years? He had to be somewhat grateful to him, despite his grudges.
With the fluffy drop bear clinging to his back, he walked down the streets of London. One of these houses had to belong to his father... Which one, he wasn't sure. He has never gone to visit his father before, or at least without an escort. The complete surprise visit had really turned into a scavenger hunt to see if he would be able to bump into the hairy eyebrowed man (though, his own eyebrows were not much better than the blonde). As he walked, he didn't notice the strange behavior of his marsupial, along with the eerie air that had seemed to loom around. He did not feel anything strange before a cold chill run into his own body and made him jolt. The brunette stiffened for a moment, in taking a deep breath. What the...
"What just happened, mate?" James frowned, shaking his head, feeling slightly strange now. Shrugging it off eventually, he continued to venture on the hunt for Arthur's home... However, only this time he had an idea of where to go. It was a miracle that he managed to find the house in a much shorter time frame now. Looking at the marsupial, he headed up through the gates and gave a sharp knock, though his uncontrollable twitching felt strange... Why in the world was he twitching...?
OUT OF CHARACTER
Name/Nickname: Cam, Cameron
Age: 18
Country and timezone: Canada, EST (-4DST/-5GMT)
Did you read the rules?: Yes. Yes I did.
Any last words?: The Annoying
Orange tastes wonderful. (:
That, and the little brother in the application is
NOT New Zealand; he is just a prop… But if the future New Zealand wants to talk about it being him, then we can talk. (: Actually... Any Aussie siblings can talk, so New Zealand and Wy... So yeah... (:
