Posted: Wed 01 Aug 2007 17:26 Post subject: Jay Tavare
Jay Tavare's Biography
Jay comes from a multi-ethnic background of Jays first big break into films bWhite Mountain Apache, Navajo and Latin.egan when he landed the co-starring role of Vega in the Universal film Streetfighter starring Raul Julia and Jean-Claude Van Damme. He followed that up with a supporting role in Executive Decision with Kurt Russell and Halle Berry.
Jays focus became more on acting by taking a lead role in the independent feature Unbowed. The film went on to win Best Picture at the American Indian Film Festival and garnered Jay the Best Actor award for his portrayal of Wakan Mani.
Turning down stereotypical Native roles along the way, Jay focused on playing realistic roles with three dimensional characteristics.
A North American search was being conducted by director Spike Jonze in finding the Native actor that could hold his own alongside Meryl Streep, Nic Cage and Chris Cooper in Adaptation. Jay won the coveted role of Matthew Osceola. The film went on to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and Golden Globe for Chris Cooper, as well as the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for Meryl Streep. Adaptation continued to win many awards during 2003 for the actors, the writer Charlie Kaufman and the director Spike Jonze.
Next, Anthony Minghella was searching for an actor to portray Swimmer in Cold Mountain alongside Jude Law. Cold Mountain also stars Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger. Jay won the role and ended up filming for several grueling months in Romania on what was originally to be a couple weeks work. The process ended up taking over 2 months and was definitely the toughest shoot thus far in Jays career, but the experience was a memorable one. During a scene where several hundred Romanian soldiers fell and piled up on Jay, he was taken to the local hospital where it was diagnosed that he had a hairline fracture in his knee. Many people working on Cold Mountain have been Oscar recipients stemming from the costume designer to the set designer, as well in Minghella himself who directed The English Patient which won over 8 oscars. Cold Mountain opens in theatres December 25.
When Jay got the call that Ron Howard wanted to meet him for one of the leads of his upcoming feature The Missing, he was hoping that the film would break Indian stereotypes that Hollywood has put into place for so many years. Ron and Jay clicked. Without auditioning, Ron offered the role of Kayitah to Jay saying that he wanted the contrast to the other Apache role of Pesh Chidin. He wanted an accurate portrayal of the Apache people in Kayitah, with him being a caring Father, a Warrior and a Medicine Man and showing the Peoples sense of humor. Kayitah is an old friend of Tommy Lee Jones, who joins forces with he and Cate Blanchett in rescuing Tommys granddaughter Lily, as well as Kayitahs daughter-in-law to be. They join in the pursuit of the kidnappers led by the evil Pesh played by Eric Schweig.
On a personal level, Jay has adopted several Navajo elders along with a Navajo family from the Adopt-a-Native-Elder program which feeds and supports elderly Navajo on 3 reservations. He stresses to please help our American Indians who are in dire need of food and clothing.
In 1999, Jay sat on a special SAG panel for American Indians in Film. He has co-hosted the Red Nation Celebration in 2001 and 2002.
Lastly, Jay is involved in both the WolfDog Rescue and the Samoyed Rescue of Southern California in rehabilitating and rescuing wolfdogs and samoyeds on death row. He has two rescued dogs of his own.
Mark Abott, Jay Tavare and Vincent McLean from the set of Unbowed
Last edited by gemini072 on Tue 07 Aug 2007 20:34; edited 1 time in total
Breaking Native American Stereotypes
in High-profile Films
by Joe Leydon
Jay Tavare spent a considerable chunk of last year at the bottom of a ditch under a blazing hot sun. And, truth to tell, he loved every moment of it.
Chalk it up to the magic of the movies. Cold Mountain is a drama set during the American Civil War, so of course it was shot mostly in Romania. The lead male character, a wounded Confederate solider who goes AWOL to reunite with his sweetheart, is played by London native Jude Law. The sweetie, a Southern belle who's tending the farm back in North Carolina, is played by Australian actress Nicole Kidman.
And Tavare? He plays the hero's best buddy and comrade-in-arms, a brave Cherokee who fights for the Rebel cause. Given his Apache ancestry, Tavare notes with a laugh, he comes closer to being typecast than almost anyone else in the production.
"It was a wonderful experience," he says. "Right from the start, you just sensed you were working on something very special. It wasn't just that the director (Anthony Minghella of The English Patient) had won an Oscar. Just about every head of every departmentthe cinematographer, the production designer and so onthey'd all won Oscars, too.
"But I have to tell you: As much as I enjoyed it, Cold Mountain was by far the most physically challenging film I've ever done."
How so?
"Remember last year, when Europe had all those floods? Well, that's when we were there, in all that extreme weather. And, you know, I didn't realize Romania was that close to the Equator. There were some days when we were working in 110 degrees or above temperatures. And there we were, in these woolen Civil War outfits. For the first six weeks, we were shooting the Battle of Petersburg, so we were mostly inside a crater.
"In a situation like that, it didn't really take much acting to look like you'd been through a war."
Maybe so, but don't be fooled: Among the ranks of ascending stars, stands out. While still a student in European boarding schools, he produced and choreographed a Spanish dance troupe, earned a World Breakdance Championship, then graduated to acting in TV commercials. After making his movie debut in Street Fighter (1994) as Vega, a matador who manhandles Jean-Claude Van Damme, the handsome Tavareborn in Arizona, raised in Southern Californiasteadily honed his craft in other character parts. His persistence paid off in 2002 when he landed a small but attention-grabbing role in Spike Jonez's Adaptation as a renegade orchid thief opposite Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper.
Now in his early 30s, Tavare is poised to take his career to the next level. And while he's careful not to sound overly confident, he can't help feeling excited about his attention-grabbing roles in two major movies that are generating high-decibel Oscar buzz: Cold Mountain, based on the best-selling novel by Charles Frazier, and The Missing, a suspenseful Western drama directed by Ron Howard.
In the latter film, Tommy Lee Jones stars as Samuel Jones, a rugged southwestern frontiersman who deserted his family to live with the Apache people. After a 20-year absence, he returns to seek reconciliation with Maggie (Cate Blanchett), his long-estranged daughter. At first, Maggie rebuffs her father. But when her own daughter is kidnapped by renegades who sell girls into slavery in Mexico, Maggie joins her errant dad on a desperate rescue mission in an unforgiving wilderness. They get by with a little help from their friend Kayitah (Tavare), an Apache warrior whose future daughter-in-law also has been snatched by the slavers.
Unfortunately, the slavers are frustratingly elusive. Even more unfortunately, their ringleaderPesh-Chidin (Eric Schweig), another Apache-is rumored, with just cause, to be a "brujo" (witch).
"You have to hand it to Ron," Tavare jokes. "In this age of political correctness, he's been daring enough to have a villain who's not just a witch, but an Apache witch."
Which may explain, he laughs, why he was cast in the first place. "Early on in the project, Ron told me, Jay, your job is actually very difficult. Because what I want from you, constantly, is contrast, contrast, contrast.'
"Seriously, though, it's good to show both extremes. Before the 1990s, every Western or period piece had Native Americans who were these double-braided, bronzed savages running around going, Woo! Woo! Woo!' And after Dances with Wolves, the tables turned, and all the Indians were benevolent and all the white folks were evil. But our film strikes a balancethere's good and bad on both sides, like there is in real life.
For me, it was crucial that Kayitah was a three-dimensional character," says Tavare. "He's a father, he's a warrior, and he's a medicine man. I know that in a lot of movies now there's this mystical element attached to Native Americans. But in reality, these Apaches are just human beings. If you cut us, we'll bleed."
(Oddly enough, Tavare originally auditioned for the role of Pesh-Chidin. "But Jay had this kind of goodness, a truly positive vibe," Howard says. "I'm sure he could play a villain, but I thought he was perfect for Kayitah.")
Tavare approached his participation in The Missing as "an honor as well as a responsibility." He traces his real-life roots, through his mother, to the White Mountain tribe. (His father, whom he never knew, was of Latin and Navajo ancestry.) But even though he's previously been cast as Native American charactersin Adaptation, for instance, he was a SeminoleKayitah is the first Apache Tavare has ever portrayed onscreen.
"I became very emotional when I got this part," he says, "because the first person I met while preparing for the film was Elbys Hugar, who's a great-granddaughter of Cochise. She was one of the advisers Ron hired to coach us in Chiricahua Apache. That's how much attention Ron pays to detail. Chiricahua is a unique dialectthere are only about 300 people who speak it fluently. And we had two or three of them on the set.
"The thing is, Chiricahua is one of those languages that are slowly dying out, becoming obsolete, because they're spoken by so few people," says Tavare. "And I'll never forget something Elbys said: You have to do this correctly, and I'll tell you why. When you appear in this film and you're speaking Apache fluently, and you do it right and well, all the young people in the tribes will see you and hear you. And maybe that will encourage them to be proud of who they are and to continue learning Apache so the language will continue to exist.'"
Smiling broadly, Tavare proudly reports: "We speak a lot of Chiricahua in The Missingabout a third of the movie has subtitlesand some of the other actors needed cue cards in some scenes or had to wear little earpieces to listen to the dialogue prompter. But I was able to speak all of my lines on my own."
Better still, Tavare also was able to convince Howard that the heavy drama needed a few moments of Chiricahua-style comic relief. Even as he played for laughs, however, Tavare remained serious about developing his character.
"Hollywood has forever created these stereotypes of the stoic, silent, emotionless Indians," he says. "And let me tell you: Breaking those stereotypes gave me tremendous pleasure."
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