Los Angeles Times recently visited the set of Chaske Spencer’s new film, ‘Winter in the Blood.’ We all know Chaske as Sam Uley in the Twilight Saga movies.

The story of a nameless young Native American man who struggles with his heritage and his life, who feels “as distant from myself as a hawk from the moon,” “Winter” is a book where not a lot happens but everything is revealed. As costar Farmer explains, raising his outstretched arm ever so slightly, “the character’s arc goes like this, nothing really changes. It’s the audience who grows. I’ve known this author my whole life, and that’s what I love about his writing.”

So here’s Spencer, hip deep in the here and now fishing in the middle of the Milk River, cinematographer Paula Huidobro right behind him. But a glance across the river lets Virgil see his childhood, lets him watch as two young actors play him and his brother Mose as scrapping kids, before the arrival of Lame Bull, his mother’s beau (played by Farmer), brings him back to the present.

Spencer, raised on reservations in Montana and Idaho, is pleased to be able to use his “Twilight” fame to “help projects like this get going.” Though his management was not initially enthusiastic, he says, “I put my foot down, I stuck with this project, I fought tooth and nail.”

“I’m not getting paid that much; the experience of doing this is the reward,” Spencer adds. “There are no special effects, no big-time soundtrack, but it’s so layered, there are so many rich emotions. A role like this challenges me. It’s why you hustle those tables, why you bartend, why I became an actor. There’s no other reason to be in the Milk River up to your chest in sludge.”

“For years as an actor, they never let us do the writing,” he says. “We had to work twice as hard to socialize the writer to Native American realities. This for me as a career actor is the culmination of that. To witness this after a 38-year career is just magic.”

To read more, visit: LA Times Via: Bella’s Diary