All Things Carl

Carl Beukes

Before we ordered our meal at Ant Pizza, Melville I asked him to tell me about his background.  He is sizzling hot (!) and has an easily recognisable face based on acting on Isidingo; other than the number commercials he was featured in and the play Death of a Colonialist, which thoroughly enjoyed, I was curious to learning more him about personally as well as his body of work. So we started with the early years.

Born in Roodepoort Carl discovered acting when he was nine years old auditioning for the Christmas play The Jungle Book and played Baloo the bear. He got the part and resulting laughter from the audience came with the realization that nothing could be better than making people laugh. He participated in every school play thereafter.

In 1990 he went to the National School of Arts to finish his schooling. When he matriculated in 1995 he had no money for tertiary and didn’t want to take a loan to further his studies.

After a feature film that was not necessarily the best experience in his acting career, he stopped doing features for a while and got into theatre and corporate theatre which was the beginning of his career struggle. He left South Africa to go London for a 2 year stint which for the most part was unpleasant as there was a period where he slept in a park and would go without eating for weeks.

The last seven months in London became more bearable when he met an English woman. They moved from London to Dorset into a little cottage on a farm where he worked as a cook and met people from all over the world. One day walking the idyllic forest on the farm he decided it was time to come back to South Africa.

To get back into the industry he worked for free on several productions. Luckily he found the best agent and soon landed his first big break on Isidingo in 2004 as Paul McPherson. After 4 years on Isidingo, where in between he did Macbeth at the Civic Theatre (now Joburg Theatre), he decided it was time to move on; ‘If you stay in 1 place too long you get quickly get typecast. For example Christopher Beasley was in Night Drive but all people saw was Len from Isidingo in a different setting’.

Up to this point he did about 50 commercials which inevitably led to him being overexposed and taking a break from television. His mother ran a crèche from home and used this opportunity to get into children’s theatre.

For eleven months after his departure from Isidingo he couldn’t get any work. He would go to auditions and fumbled as the desperation set in.

He auditioned for Jozi and didn’t get the role initially. The director, Craig Friemond told him he didn’t feel the character was for him because Carl was dark and although the lead character was troubled he was light. Carl didn’t give up as he felt he knew the character as he overcome his heroine drug addiction and he also understood the pressures of Joburg. Craig conceded. According to Carl, Jozi is one of the funniest production he’s ever done and truly loved working with everyone. He’s quick to add that it is ‘fucking stressful’ making movies, but it is also fun.  Everyone on Jozi was very proud of the movie in that they made it happen.

After Jozi he landed a role on Binnelanders for a year and a half that allowed him the opportunity to get back into the Afrikaans community. Next he starred in a feature called ‘Stealing Time’ which for various has not been released.

Again he set idle until Death of a Colonialist earlier this year at Market Theatre, alongside master actor Jamie Barlett, whom he loves and respects.

His diary is a lot busier these days and he has a big role in an international movie starting production on 10 December in Cape Town. The Girl is an Alfred Hitchcock movie with international starlet Sienna Miller and will be filming for two months. He says he is thrilled because it is a beautiful script and the character is not too far from him. Our hunk is going international!

On top of all this he is writing a horror screenplay. South Africa needs to make more horror films because the genre invokes something that the youth are thrilled by. Thrills are what they lack because they live indoors, behind computers screens and mobile phones. Producing horror is also inexpensive as they require a simple story and a small cast. He feels this is the way forward for this country.

Overall he says he is excited about the SA film industry. A lot of people got to work, go home to watch TV and judge the world based on what is on the screen which can often be frightening. Carl has come to realize that we are all in the same boat, we feel and want the same thing, there is a lot of passion that sometimes bleeds into bullshit, however, that is what makes this an awesome place to be. The industry is growing even without the money.

Tidbits that excite and make Carl proud:

·         His older sister is world renowned ballet dancer Karen Beukes.

·         He has an 11 year old sister that his parents adopted after a 5 year struggle with the adoption agency.

·         Aside from the crèche at home, his mother also runs the SPCA