Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alfred E. Rutherford. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Alfred E. thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the toughest things about progressing in your creative career is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?
As an artist there are always unexpected problems/issues from having to work a day job and find a way to go on an audition. That was when we had in person auditions, now it’s mostly self tapes which makes it a lot easier. I think one of the hardest parts of being an artist is to secure a job that will allow you to go away when you have a film project without fear of losing your steady job. Back in the day when I got my first lead in a Feature film I was working at the YMCA at the time and I had to take off for 1 month. It’s always a tricky situation because a couple of days is understandable but not many jobs will understand 1 month off. Fortunately for me it worked and they were very accommodating with my pursuit of my career but I know many of my artist friends have not been so lucky.
Alfred E., before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I was born in Florida, but shortly thereafter I began to Experience really bad asthma and the doctors told my mother that maybe a change of environment would be best suited for me. My mother who was from the Bahamas decided to take me to the Bahamas and that’s where I grew up from ages 2-14. While in the Bahamas I met a performing arts teacher named Ms. Patty Limperes, from Chicago who was teaching at my school. She introduced me to Theater and that’s when I fell in Love with acting. I have to admit in the beginning I did not think of it as a career, but it was something fun to do since at the time I was already performing in talent shows. She coordinated a lot of the talent shows on the island and one day approached me about joining her dance troupe. I Loved to dance but I was reluctant because I didn’t want my friends to laugh at me but she convinced me and I got so much joy from dancing and doing plays that I would just lose myself in a performance and feel free, but I was too young to know what that really meant. I also became a very good basketball player and this is where I kind of went off course. I started to want to play basketball more and more and now it became a conflict of time management between the two. Then, I decided that I wanted to return back to the United States and came back for High School but by then I had totally forgotten about acting and was all about athletics. By the time I got to college I was all about school and playing ball but I decided to take an acting class and I met another teacher by the name of Amy Fripp in Boston who picked up where Ms. Limperes left off, and she told me that I was an Actor. I didn’t really know how to take it but I didn’t take it seriously. I then moved to NYC to finish my college education at Saint Peter’s University. I took a few acting classes here and there but nothing of a real pursuit until one day I was asked by a friend to audition for this NYU student film and during the audition a producer was in the room who worked on some indie films told me that he thought I had star power and could go far in the industry but still, I didn’t take it too seriously until my brother got sick and one day he told me that he thought I was an actor and I need to pursue that. He asked me to promise him that I would try and I did so when he passed away I honored my promise only to find out it was the thing that I loved to do the most and I’ve been going ever since. I’m most proud of finding my way to my passion when a lot of people never get the chance to see what it feels like. I have been fortunate to be able to play a vast array of characters and not just stereotypical character types. Every time you watch a film that I’m in, just know that a lot of thought goes into what projects I take on because I love creating and I like playing characters that are universal. So my brand is always about interpreting the human condition in a form of edutainment which is educating and entertaining at the same time.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
This is something that I always have conversations about with my friends. I have some friends who are from Europe and I’m always interested in what kind of support they get in their prospective countries because I feel like here in the United States, artists are on the lowest totem pole until they are successful. If someone ask you what you do for a living and you say ooh I’m an Actor or musician it’s like ooh your a starving artist and a lot of the times you are looked down upon and that’s crazy to me because the minute you are seen on TV, it’s like everybody’s behavior changes toward you now your this special person and that’s crazy. It’s a career, a Job, probably the most competitive job in the world to be an entertainer because almost everybody wants to do it and since in the USA we don’t have Royalty but we have celebrity, that’s our form or royalty and everybody’s competing for those jobs, even people who are artist at their core but want to be famous, which is something totally different. I think there needs to be more respect for the process that artists go through in order to achieve success because until there are any signs of success many artists feel like failures. It’s funny because I don’t think a lot of people realized how important art is until we had the Pandemic in 2020 and everyone was forced to stay inside and it was the artist who kept the whole world sane because all we could do was watch tv and see actors working in their craft. So I think there needs to be more support for artists when they want to pursue a career in art that they can feel supported and there should be more information about programs that can support artists especially financially since the pursuit of a career in art can be a financially devastating one until one reaches a certain level of success. I myself am on a mission to bring awareness to this and I am already working closely with a couple of individuals in the world of business and politics to bring about some form of empowerment programs for artists.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My Goal is to bring films to the screen that aren’t just the stereotypical stories about people of color. Coming up as an actor the only roles you would often have told were about black people are stories about emotional trauma and that’s all we are. Everything is about the hood or the struggle and while those stories need to be told and they have a place they are over done and they point a picture of the black Experience as being only about pain and sorrow and that’s far from the truth. My goal is to tell universal stories where anybody could be the lead, it just happens to be somebody black, latino or asian. Stories of failure, heartbreak and redemption. Feel good stories without having to be over the top. One thing that always bothered me as a kid was I would see movies that took place in NYC or LA but I would never see anyone who looked like me except for the criminal or the over the top comedic relief. Now let me be clear, the industry has come a long way since I was a kid and there are more opportunities for people of color than ever before but we still have a ways to go when we are just watching a film and it is reflective of the world we live in.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alfrederutherford.com
- Instagram: @alfreder16
- Facebook: @therealalrederutherford
- Twitter: @alfreder16