Meet Erik Thurston of Actor

Today we’d like to introduce you to Erik Thurston.

Hi Erik, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I didn’t start acting until I was a junior in high school. Before that, I was an athlete. I started swimming competitively when I was eight years old and swam through high school where I specialized in the 200 and 500 freestyle and I played doubles on the boys Tennis team. I loved it, but at some point I started to crave something different. Yes, as others have pointed out to me in the past, I begrudgingly admit that this sounds a lot like “High School Musical”. I always loved hearing and reading stories thanks in no small part to my mom and dad who were both teachers. My dad was an English teacher and when I was younger, he would often times bring me into work and I would play and watch movies, which usually ended up being “The Labyrinth” while he graded papers and would watch “The Nightmare Before Christmas” on repeat with me at home. He became and still is my number one movie watching buddy. My mom was a Spanish teacher, and while I didn’t pick up the Spanish, I did pick up her love of music. When she took me to preschool, we would pass this lake that always had this creepy mist surrounding it in the morning and I would ask her to sing me “La Llorona”. Apparently, I was just a creepy kid who was into creepy stuff from a really young age and it was watching a certain creepy movie, “Donnie Darko” that I really ran away with the idea of trying acting. The movie just profoundly affected me for some reason and I knew I wanted to tell stories like that, so I decided to go out for my schools next musical, “Hello Dolly”, which, I guess, was close enough.
Fast forward through a horrendous audition in which I forgot half of my monologue and was so nervous I sang my song down a whole octave, which did not sound good at all and I still somehow found myself on stage as one of five waiters trying to calm down and catch our breath from the absolute craziness of the “waiters march” and getting ready to welcome Dolly into the Harmonia Gardens and sing the titular song. This was my first time performing to a full auditorium. To say I was nervous would be an understatement but then Amanda (Dolly) comes in looking stunning and starts singing and effortlessly gliding down the massive staircase we we’re all lined up on and completely changes the feeling in the room to something magical. By the time we start singing you can really feel the room swaying and up till that point, it was some of the most fun I had ever had in my life. The acting bug had bit me hard and I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I went on to be part of a few more shows before graduating. “Cats”, “No Exit”, and the “Diary of Anne Frank”.
I ended up going to Adams State University as a major in Theatre and Communication Arts. There I was fortunate to be able to participate in a wide range of shows, my last one there I played the Marquis de Sade in a production of “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade”. A title that requires no synopsis to go with it. Sade is the reason we even have the word, “sadistic” and it was an incredible acting challenge and a defining role. Whenever Sade opened his mouth to speak it would usually be in full page long philosophical monologues which were about life, death and existentialism. I remember distinctly, being on stage with nothing to say, watching the action unfold knowing the time for me to speak and I mean SPEAK, was getting closer and closer and I wouldn’t be able to recall a single line of mine. By the time we got to just before the time I had to open mouth I would hear something another character said and it would all come flooding back and spilling out. I began to trust the work I was doing, at least a little.
After graduating from ASU I moved to Denver CO where I instantly started auditioning. On top of performing shows at theatre houses around the front range I also got into some odd but fun gigs like performing in the summer shows at Elitch Gardens for a couple seasons, being a part of the Polar Express Experience in Golden and even performed at Casa Bonita for a brief time, two different times. I also acted in student films and made some short films of our own with some good friends. The first one was called “3 Wise Guys” and it was an unhinged Christmas horror comedy short film. (For the record, we did it long before “Violent Night.” The second was supposed to be called “3 Wise Guys 2,” Me and a buddy of mine almost died in the mountains of Wyoming while trying to make it but that’s a much longer story full of really bad decisions. We tried to film it out in the mountains near Centennial Wyoming but so many things went wrong, we had to come up with a completely new idea and film. We ended up calling it “3 Wise Guys 1 1/2.”
In 2019 I decided to pursue film and TV smore aggressively and started to train and hone my craft farther at PEAK acting studios. I still train there today and I have started to see more success in things I audition for. Most recently I finished working on an action adventure western, called “Bone Rush” and a Sify romantic drama called “30 minutes left.” I have no idea where I’ll end up in my future, hopefully it takes me the way of playing the lead in a stage production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.” or being a motion caption actor for video games or playing the lead in mini series adaptation of “Slaughter House 5′” directed by Taika Waititi…. I haven’t given much thought to it, but wherever that may be, I hope I will have inspired someone else to make a change in their life, or who knows, push them to give their acting dream a chance and go out for the next school show.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There have been quite a few bumps in the road. There have been bumps, sharp turns, lane closures, switchbacks, loose screws, road spikes randomly thrown in front of you and potholes so big, when you hit them your head hits the roof of your car while your eyes glaze over and your soul leaves your body for a second. It’s all just a part of this industry.
Some people are just naturals when it comes to acting, something just clicks in their head and then they just go. Let me tell you right now, I am not one of these people. I was pretty bad when I first started and it’s only somewhat recently, almost 15 years later that I can confidently say, “I know a little more now.” As fun as it can be when you’re on set or on stage, the profession itself can be extremely challenging. It demands a lot of energy and time from you. You have to get good at taking rejection and though it’s common to be passed up for rolls for things that are completely out of your control, you also have to be able to look back at these auditions and be truthful with yourself. Did you not get it for something out of your hands, or did you drop the ball somewhere in your preparation and can you fix it for the next one?
One of my biggest personal challenges came when I was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma (a cancer of the blood) in 2019 when I was 25 years old which as you can imagine put a halt to everything for quite some time. I moved from Denver back to Fort Collins where I grew up to start chemotherapy. When I got my CAT scan the majority of my upper body was lit up and it was coming dangerously close to my spine. I would have to have 6 rounds of R-EPOCH administered in the hospital for 5 days in a row on a constant 24-hour drip. I’m not going to lie, I truly thought I was going back to FoCo to slowly die. Just before I was diagnosed, I ended up booking a couple student films. When I reached out to the directors of these films to tell them the news, they both wanted to keep me on their projects as long as I was up for it. Both of them were set to film fairly early into my treatments and I was eager to work on them because I thought they might be last projects I ever do. The first one filmed about a week after my first round of chemo. I had started to lose my hair and that was definitely stressful but I was happy to be on set. In between shots, while the next one was being set up, I would go to the bathroom where I would pull handfuls of hair out and have a quick little freakout and breakdown before putting my beanie back on and going back to set. There was a scene in which my character gets knocked to the ground and just pummeled and I don’t know why but it took some convincing for the actor doing the pummeling to go through with it. He may have had one or two reservations about beating the shit out of a dying kid, go figure, but he eventually came around hahaha. The second project filmed after I got out of the hospital for my second round. I was completely bald and was already a lot more tired, but it was a fun shoot. It was about a guy trying to skip town who picks up a hitchhiker; a pot smoking eccentric old woman who is also trying to skip town. It was a breath of fresh air to make (minus the pot smoke, which was fake of course, cough, cough) and a good distraction. After my third round of chemo, the massive, uh…..mass on my sternum had completely disappeared and my oncologist began giving more positive prognosis. I started to allow myself to feel hopeful that I’ll actually see the other side of this, and 3 rounds later, on July 9th 2019, I was declared to be in full remission.
After going into remission, I started working again and began to pursue film more aggressively. I started taking acting classes at PEAK acting studios and was really enjoying myself, but unfortunately another massive bump in the road was coming in the form of a global pandemic. I had about 6 months to enjoy my freedom before COVID came and changed everything. Remember when we thought we were just going to take a two, three week break tops before this all blows over and we can get back normal. We had absolutely no clue what we were in for. When it became clear that this was going to go in for much longer, we moved our classes to online format over zoom and continued to train through the pandemic. The switch was difficult, but it honestly gave us valuable experience in how the industry was going to operate from here on out. In person auditions were gone and honestly haven’t really come back since. Now everything is over self-tape and online callbacks. Not long after the pandemic on of the biggest writers strikes occurred, to be later joined by the actors. AI was progressing fast and it made our relevance in the industry we love, very uncertain. The strike was to put safeguards in for artists but to be honest, I don’t think the ones that were implemented are enough and I am still very nervous for the future. On top of an industry that could just not recover, here in the state of Colorado, we have some of the worst tax incentives to support film productions in the country. Recently, we have had a small increase to it, and now with Sundance Film festival coming to Colorado, eyes could now turn this state and maybe bring new possibilities.
So yeah, it’s definitely been a rough road, but as low as the lows can be the highs that this life have brought me have been some of the best. It’s given me so many fun experiences that other wise would have never had. It’s brought me to exciting places like the heart of a still functioning gold mine, an abandoned power plant, haunted houses and grave yards, insane asylums, digital WorldScape’s and post-apocalyptic wastelands all to do what I love most and tell stories, and I can’t ever see myself being happy trying to do anything else.

We’ve been impressed with Actor, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
To be an Actor, means that you’re going to have to have a lot of side hustles. Every job I’ve ever done has been done to help me pursue my acting dream and I have a multitude of strange jobs because of it. I’ve worked for the Parks Department of Broomfield doing everything from, maintaining the public structures to debating with the Parks Department of Westminster just who the hell is supposed to be maintaining the public trail between us and who it was that was going to have dig mud out of the water way that was clogging it up and flooding the place. Of course, the job fell to me. I’ve served tables at Denny’s and worked for a catering company on and off for the last 10 years. I even worked a side gig trimming wear houses full of weed, all CBD strains. During pandemic, those jobs got even more eclectic. Briefly delivered for Dominoes before a job delivering liquor kind of just fell into lap. It was the 20’s all over again and I was pretty much a rum runner. Now I work for event bartending company that bartends things like weddings and massive concerts at Civic Center Park and I bartend at a theatre put in Parker. They all have to have fairly flexible schedules so I can go to an audition at a moments notice.

Who else deserves credit in your story?
I’ve had a lot of great mentors over the years and not just in acting. My swim coach, Heather, is to this day the image of health that comes to my mind. Sadly she is no longer with us, but I can still hear her whenever I get in the pool. She knew just how to time her cheers whenever your head broke the water to pump you up. I would say my friends are big advocates. We’re all trying to do it together and push each other to be better, and on not so great nights they’re there to have a drink or ten. My College professors, John Taylor, Paul Newman (no, not that Paul Newman) and Jenna Nielson who were big parts of my earlier acting years. My many mentors that I have had since then, Stuart Stone, Christine Reed, Richard Muller and my current Mentor, Frederick Koehler who pushes me and my classmates to get constantly get better and who has completely changed how I approach a role. He says, “Every actor should have a little self loathing, it pushes them to be better and not get comfortable, but damn guys. You can tone it down a little.” Most of all, a lot of the credit for me being here at all goes to my mom and dad who didn’t bat an eye when I told them I wanted to go to college for theatre. Who has never missed a show and who has encouraged me to keep going and talked me off the ledge when things weren’t going well. They still like to tell me when I see them, “Thank you for all the wonderful entertainment over the years.”

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erikthurston/

Image Credits
@richardmullerphotography (Richard Muller)