Actor Bill Oberst Jr. has made a name for himself playing killers on the stage and on screen. Having appeared on the CBS hit show “Criminal Minds”, Bill is proud to hold the IMDB record for having secured the “Most Screen Credits” in a five-year period. Bill has won a Daytime Emmy Award, an Ernest Kearney Platinum Medal, a Best LA Solo Show Award, and the Lon Chaney Award. Most recently, he secured a supporting role in “Hunting Grounds” which won the “Best Sci-Fi/Horror Award” at the Toronto Independent Film Festival. Bill was eager to discuss his experiences as an actor and entertainer.
Acting
Blasting News (BN): How did you and the movie industry get connected to each other?
Bill Oberst Jr. (BOJ): By accident. After sixteen years of making my living on the east-coast stage I wandered into television in 2007 with a role as the infamous Civil War General W.T. Sherman in a docu-drama for History Channel. Since then I have alternated between stage and screen.
BN: How did you get the gig for "Hunting Grounds"?
BOJ: The director John Portanova offered me the role of the Sasquatch hunter Bauman in his Bigfoot drama, and I was delighted. I'm a wilderness camper myself, and a Sasquatch enthusiast, so I really enjoyed the shoot. Tromping around the forests of Washington state with a backpack was my idea of heaven.
Plus, I got to scream a lot.
BN: So, what most interested you about the film? Specifically, your role in it?
BOJ: My character's name is an homage to Teddy Roosevelt's 1892 account of a man with the same name's encounter with a creature we would now call a Sasquatch. I liked John's sense of history, and especially his determination to present Sasquatch as real-world living beings, and not as myth.
There's no supernatural element to the Sasquatch in "Hunting Grounds," and I liked that very much.
Entertainment
BN: What is your favorite thing about being a part of the entertainment industry?
BOJ: My personal belief is that God exists, and that every living being in His creation has a gift and a purpose. We all have a vocation; a thing that our soul persistently whispers to us that we were born to do.
This is mine. That's enough. The rest is gravy.
BN: So, tell me, what is coming up for you in 2017?
BOJ: After "Hunting Grounds," I think my next horror genre release will be director Billy Pon's film "Circus of the Dead." I'm currently memorizing the entire “Gospel of Mark” for a solo stage show that opens next month and then will tour, and I'm headed to Germany and Czech Republic again this spring to play SS General Hans Kammler for the second part of director Andreas Sulzer's TV documentary series about the weapons-of-mass-destruction which Hitler was working on at the close of WWII. That's sort of my usual mix.
BN: Given all your experience, what words of advice can you offer to those who are aspiring to secure jobs in Hollywood?
BOJ: Give everything and expect nothing. Be grateful when you're working and graceful when you're not. Acting is the single most difficult profession in which to earn a living. You have to be nuts to do this. But if you are, there's always room for one more!
