Locally raised actor Chaske Spencer will have a major role in "New Moon," the movie sequel to the wildly popular "Twilight" vampire series.
Spencer will play alpha wolf Sam Uley. The movie is filming in Vancouver, British Columbia, under high security and secrecy because of concerns about crowd control. The series, based on a set of top-selling teen novels by Stephenie Meyer, is about a group of modern-day vampires living on the Washington state coast.
"It's really exciting," says Spencer's mother, Jan Spencer, a special education teacher at Tammany Alternative School in Lewiston, where she also is the Indian educator and drug educator. Her husband, Jim Spencer, is a counselor at Clearwater Valley Elementary School in Kooskia.
Since finding out he was in the film, she's read all the books and seen the "Twilight" movie. She says it's exciting to see her son be a part of a pop culture phenomenon. Paparazzi uncovered the identities of the actors in the film earlier this week, she says. Before that the family was not allowed to talk about Spencer's role in the film.
Spencer, whose first name is pronounced "chess-kay," was born in Oklahoma and spent part of his childhood in Lapwai, Kooskia and Montana. His heritage includes Sioux, Nez Perce, Cherokee, Creek, French and Dutch. In "New Moon" he will play a Quileute Indian shape-shifter, or werewolf. In Meyer's book, legend has it the Quileute are descended from wolves. The film is due to be released Nov. 20.
Spencer got into acting at the age of 10, when he tried out for the Lewiston Civic Theatre play "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown." He was in the drama club at Clearwater Valley High School in Kooskia and started acting classes at Lewis-Clark State College before heading to New York City to pursue an acting career. He's had roles in the movie "Skins," a follow-up to the 1998 film "Smoke Signals," and the 2003 ABC-TV miniseries "Dreamkeeper."
Periodic updates on filming may be found online at www.lmtribune.com/blogs/.
Bauer may be contacted at jkbauer@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2263.
