John Robinson: 2008

John Robinson is a young up-and-coming American actor probably best recalled for playing John McFarland in Gus Van Sant's “Elephant” (2003), which marked his feature acting debut, and skateboarder Stacy Peralta in Catherine Hardwicke's “Lords of Dogtown” (2005). On comparing Gus Van Sant to Catherine Hardwicke, he said, “... Catherine brought so much energy to this movie every single day. She had to be more energetic than everybody. She was so passionate about everybody's story and she had to connect all these different elements and be true to all these different guys. Gus was much more calm. He's the type that would sit you down and have a very private conversation. Not that Catherine doesn't do that. She's a female. Very emotional, very sensitive woman. To have that element on a film where you have all this masculinity was exactly what we needed. Plus, their styles are totally different.”
The thespian also acted in the films Asia Argento's “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things” (2004), “Crimes of Passion” (2005, TV), David Von Ancken's “Seramphin Falls” (2006), Michael Bay's “Transformers” (2007) and Jess Manafort's “The Beautiful Ordinary” (also 2007).

Portland Boy

Childhood and Family:

John Christian Robinson was born on October 25, 1985, in Portland, Oregon. He graduated from Oregon Episcopal School in 2005 and currently is attending UCLA. He also studied acting for years in his local of Portland. John enjoys snowboarding and played lacrosse in high school.

“I grew up in Portland, Oregon and I snowboarded and wakeboarded and just did a lot of different board sports. But skateboarding... I was always scared because, you know, concrete. It's pretty unforgiving. So I never did get too into it since I was scared. But thankfully, we had 3 months of training, so immediately once I started doing that I became totally obsessed with skateboarding. Still am.” John Robinson

Elephant

Career:

“I did about 6 years of acting classes. In Portland, there's one agency for like Fred Myer commercials. I never wanted to do stuff like that. No reason for it. But I just loved acting and took every semester of acting in high school. Then, accidentally, I just wanted to be an extra on this Gus Van Sant movie. That'd be cool. And I ended up being in the casting for it. It just happened. It was just a huge dream come true. I feel so fortunate to have that, especially since I've grown up always wanting to be an actor.” John Robinson

A native of Portland, Oregon, John Robinson made his professional acting debut at age 18, when he won the significant supporting role of John McFarland, opposite Alex Frost and Eric Deulen, on “Elephant” (2003), a controversial film by writer/director Gus Van Sant. Mirroring the Columbine school shootings, the crime/drama garnered Van Sant wealth recognitions at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Film Cesar.

Robinson's next job arrived with the drama film “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things” (2004), which was directed and scripted by and starring Asia Argento. Here he was cast in the small role of Aaron. Among his costars in the film were Peter Fonda, Kip Pardue, Jeremy Renner, and the twins Dylan and Cole Sprouse, who jointly portrayed older Jeremiah, a boy thrown to a harassed life on the street with his young mother, Sarah (portrayed by Argento).

The following year, Robinson cracked into the small screen with his role as James Corbin on the thriller/mystery made-for-TV film shot in Montréal, Québec, Canada, “Crimes of Passion” (2005), which starred Dina Meyer, Jonathan Higgins and Amy Sloan. It was also in 2005 that Robinson again attracted attention when he landed the starring role of Stacy Peralta, one of the original Z-Boys, on the Catherine Hardwicke-helmed “Lords of Dogtown,” a movie that follows the skateboarding and surf trends that originated in Venice, California during the 1970s. Heath Ledger, Nikki Reed, Rebecca De Mornay and Emile Hirsch also starred in the film, which was scripted by real-life skateboarder Stacy Peralta. When asking about how daunting it is to play a real life character who is often around the set, he said, “It was pretty crazy. Luckily (Stacy Peralta and I) had gotten to hang out a lot and really develop a friendship before the movie. It wasn't like we got on the set and there he was! Ah! I hung out with him a lot and he taught me a lot of things. He was so supportive and wasn't like “Hey, don't do that! No! Stop the cameras! I'd never do that!.” Luckily we had so much time to prepare so that really every scene and every skateboard move was broken down so that we wouldn't run into that problem.”

Next, Robinson teamed up with Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, Michael Wincott and Ed Lauter for the war/drama film “Seramphin Falls” (2006), helmed and co-written by David Von Ancken, and was cast as Miles on the Michael Bay blockbuster hit “Transformers” (2007), which won a 2007 MTV Movie for Best Summer Movie You Haven't Seen Yet. His latest movie, “The Beautiful Ordinary,” a comedy-drama set in 1999 on the last day of school for a bunch of suburbanites starring Lyndsy Fonseca, debuted at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2007 and released in Indonesia in September, that same year.

Although his acting career is on the rise, the 22-year-old actor maintains to pursue his college studies. Responding on a question about what will actually keep him from going to college, he said, “I don't think so. Unless it was Gus Van Sant who offered me a 6 picture deal. (Laughter) I have so much time, you know? You come down here and you see that so many actors don't go to college and for me, being an actor, it's like you have to have the tools of life to understand what you're doing in your scenes and stuff like that. To not go to college and learn about different things, it's like you're losing a step to other actors. I think having a liberal arts education is as important to an actor as it is to simply being a person. You know? As a human being. As an American.”