Bruce Campbell Essay, Research Paper

Bruce Campbell is an accomplished actor. His career started at the age of fourteen. Over the years he has appeared in a variety of acting roles, which have made him very well known.

Bruce Campbell is forty-one years old and was born on June 22nd, 1958.

(http:\www.imdb.com) He is the youngest of three brothers, was born in Royal Oak, Michigan and has two children. He considers himself to have had a normal childhood in that he watched “Lost in Space” on television, dug tunnels in his back yard and ran around dressed up as Zorro. (http:\www.bruce-campbell.com)

Bruce started taking interest in acting at the age of eight when he saw how much fun his dad had while performing in local community theater. His first official acting job occurred at age fourteen when an actor who was to play the young prince in the “King and I” became ill and he stepped into the role. He went on to appear in several community theater productions and then started to experiment with filmmaking, doing cheezeball super-8 flicks with a neighborhood pal. In 1975 he then met director Sam Raimi in his high school drama class who he became friends with. They made about fifty or so super-8 movies. In 1976 he volunteered as an apprentice in northern Michigan at Traverse City’s Cherry County Playhouse – a summer stock company where he worked eighteen hours a day putting up sets, being assistant stage manager, doing errands and so on. He got to work with television actors and considers it his first taste of Hollywood. He then briefly attended Western Michigan University where he took theater courses but dropped out because he felt it got too artsy. For about a year after this he worked as a production assistant for a production company that made commercials in Detroit. This consisted of sweeping out studios, cleaning up camera equipment, and various tasks. It was a good chance for Bruce to learn the technical side of the business rather then just the artsy actor stuff. (Http:\www.bruce-campbell.com)

Bruce Campbell really took on acting seriously in 1979 when Bruce, Sam, and new associate Rob Tapert put together a short super-8 horror film, “Within The Woods”, this led up to the making of “Evil Dead” after raising about 350,000 dollars from the short film. Bruce starred in the “Evil Dead”, not to mention was co-executive producer for it as well. Four years later, the completed film first got noticed in England where it became the best selling video of 1983, beating out “The Shining.” Author Stephen King then dubbed the “Evil Dead”, “the most ferociously original horror film of the year.” New Line Cinema stepped forward to release it in the United States. After then doing another film called “Crime Wave”, “Evil Dead II : Dead By Dawn” was blessed with a budget ten times the original and was released in 1987 which again starred Bruce Campbell. After this, Bruce Campbell then moved to Los Angeles where he got into a series of independent films and met his future wife, costume designer Ida Gearon. In 1992 he then rejoined with Sam and Rob and co-produced the third installment of the “Evil Dead” trilogy, “Army of Darkness” which he also starred in. Bruce then took on many different tasks which included television roles on “The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.”, guest starring on “Lois and Clark : The New Adventures of Superman”, and plays Actoycus : The King of Thieves on “Hercules : The Legendary Journeys” and “Xena : Warrior Princess”, not to mention many more.(http:\www.bruce-campbell.com)

Bruce’s accomplishments are his list of movie credits, his various skills : acting,

directing, producing, writing, editing, sound and so on. He also did some voices on some cutting edge cd-rom adventure games for 7th Level, Konami, and Activision. As of now he has decided to write a book tentatively entitled Confessions of a `B` Movie Actor. (http:\www.etonline.com)

Bruce is most well known for his roles in classic `B` films, making him a cult actor with a lot of praise from loyal fans. Since Bruce started acting at such a young age and has accomplished so much it has left him with the skills needed to continue his career and have much success in the future.

References :

Entertainment Tonight Online Home Page. (http:\www.etonline.com)

The Internet Movie Database Home Page. (http:\www.imdb.com)

The Official Bruce Campbell Home Page. (http:\www.bruce-campbell.com)