profiles

By Linda Winsh-Bolard

Adam Ruebin Beach was born on November 11, 1972 in Asherton on Dog Creek Reservation in Manitoba, Canada. Adam Beach is a member of Salteaux Tribe. A drunk driver killed his pregnant Mother as she stood in front of their house when he was eight years old. Two months later his father drowned, reportedly in depression. Adam and his two brothers had to move in with his relatives in Winnipeg.

While attending Gordon Bell High School he became interested in theater and music. He used to run home to watch Johnny Depp in 21 Jump Street. At school Adam formed a band; Lethic, heavy on metal and short lived. But he also started acting in the local theater and eventually dropped out of school to play a lead part in Manitoba Theatre for Young’s production of Red River Valley.

His screen career began by rowing the star’s canoe in the television adaptation of Farley Mowat's Lost in the Barrens (1990). In1994 he played Squnto in Disney’s production of Squnto: A Warrior Tales, and over the years he appeared in number of television shows, among them Walker, Texas Ranger, Touched by an Angel, First Wave and Madison. The big break came with the adaptation of Sherman Alexie’s Smoke Signals (1998), where he landed the lead and re-united with Evan Adams, the star of Barrens. Smoke Signals won Audience Award and Filmmaker’s Trophy award for the director Chris Eyre at the Sundance festival and recognition for Adam Beach. Mystery Alaska, in the same year, was a vehicle for Russell Crowe, Adam got to play hockey for some three months on the set, but it was a Hollywood production. Other movie parts followed, he even played the romantic lead in Helen Lee’s comedy The Art of Woo.

The real things came in 2001 when Chris Eyre cast him as Jim Chee in PBS series based on Tony Hillerman’s novels about two Navajo cops working on Four Corners Reservation. The first segment Skinwalkers, also reunited Beach with Michael Greyeyes, both were in Smoke Signals. The same year brought him another Navajo part: code talker Ben Yahzee who was charged with coding of US military dispatches during World War II in Windtalkers, starring Nicholas Cage. The success made him to leave Canada and move to LA. Jim Chee returned again in Thief of Time (2002) and in Coyote Waits (2003). The six months that Adam Beach spent learning to speak Navajo, a very difficult language, paid off. Neither Johnny Tootall (2003) nor Cowboys and Indians or Bottoms Up (2003-5) were big releases, but Flags of Our Fathers, with Adam Beach in the role of Ira Hayes, got Oscar nomination for 2006.

Adam Beach said that the part “was an ultimate achievement”. Ira Hayes was portrayed twice before by white actors, discriminated against in life, nicknamed Chief Falling Cloud, just like Beach is called “Chief” on the set. Adam Beach recognizes the ignorance behind it, and the loneliness and pain Ira lived with.

Next comes working again with Wes Studi, who shared the success of Hillerman’s series as Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, and now joins Beach in HBO TV film Bury My Heart at the Wounded Knee scheduled for release in May 2007. Beach portrays the educated Lakota doctor Charles Eastman. He has also joined Law & Order: Special Victim Unit. About joining the show Beach said:” It's history in the making: there will be a Native American individual who will be shown nationwide on television once a week. Native people will be able to look at TV and see themselves. That for me is a dream role, too.”(Time Magazine, 2.2.2007)

Adam Beach is keenly aware that his success makes him a stereotype and a role model for other Native Americans simultaneously. He made a short educational clip about the danger of glue sniffing, a serious problem on Canada’s reservations, travels to Canadian schools and speaks to Native American children. He told to Time Magazine: “I do acknowledge my status as a role model for Native American people. I carry it on my sleeve. I do want a younger generation to look at me and say, "Wow, what did he do to achieve such status in Hollywood?" I want Native children to have success with their hopes and dreams. The history of Native American people is a tragedy. I want to show that we as Native people are successful. We do have things to offer to the world.” (Time Magazine 2007) Beach told Aubry Anne D’Arminio from All Movie Guide in 2005 that he plans to act for two more decades and then go to politics. Before that he would love to film Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, currently a video game.

Adam Beach received the “Rising Star Award” at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, January 2007. He married Meredith Porter in 1999, has two sons, Noah and Luke, with her and divorced her 2002. In 2003 he married Tara Mason. He lives in Los Angeles and Ottawa, Canada.

Credits: 2007 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee 2006 Flags of Our Fathers2006 Bottoms Up2005 Johnny Tootall2003 Cowboys and Indians: The J.J. Harper Story2003 Coyote Waits2003 The Big Empty2003 A Thief of Time2002 Windtalkers2002 Skinwalkers2001 Joe Dirt2001 Now & Forever2001 The Art of Woo 2000 The Last Stop1999 Mystery, Alaska1998 Smoke Signals 1996 Coyote Summer1995 A Boy Called Hate Squanto: A Warrior's Tale1994 Dance Me Outside1993 Cadillac Girls1993 Spirit Rider1991 Lost in the Barrens