Virgin River's Benjamin Hollingsworth on His Acting Career and The Hyper Connectedness of Celebrity
WORDS BY,
CALEB CHURCH
Photo: Fiorella Occhipinti
Benjamin Hollingsworth had a stage to let his imagination and knack for storytelling run free,
as well as a cast and audience all but held captive by the family structure.
13 MINS READ TIME
The world needs storytellers. Without them, communication slows, messages become less impactful, and meaning seems to vanish from behind the ideas we believe. With a story that starts in Ontario, Canada, Benjamin found his path to acting by a series of fortunate events with an underpinning tone that resonates with the importance of mentorship along the way. With this, Benjamin found the seed to his acting career in presenting at school; quoting that it’s something most people would hate doing.
He loved it.
Naturally this progressed to school performance, and eventually sneaking onto a big set that was casting extras. By aligning himself in the right place at the right time, he was pulled to have a speaking role in the production, and the rest is history.
To solidify his path, Benjamin pursued a course of study at the National Theatre School of Canada. Fast forward a few years later, maintaining his passion for storytelling and a finely honed sense of imagination, he has sustained work on several network shows. From an appearance on Degrassi, to a regular spot on the cast of Virgin River on Netflix.
I had a chance to catch up with Benjamin just after the release of Virgin River’s latest season to discuss life through the pandemic, where he channels his inspiration, and his take on social media.
Photo: Jenna Berman
CC: What made you decide to pursue acting as your career?
BH: Oh, you know, what… gosh. I used to tell stories, my sister, she was like, six or seven, and I would have probably been four or five. And basically, she directed me in makeshift plays for our parents. At this point, my parents had a new baby. I'm one of four kids and basically, it was just attention seeking back in the day, trying to get parents' attention, but my sister would kind of direct me and tell me where to stand and say things and so I guess that might have been what started it all.
I always love telling stories and I have a massive imagination. That's one of the things I use every day and I cherish having. Having an imagination that’s as large as mine I think is one of my best assets as an actor.
I love utilizing it. I tell my kids stories every night I make it up as they go. I live in fairytale land. I'm an actor, right? It’s the perfect solution for my imagination. My starving imagination and my need to tell stories never really died out. And the more I did it, the more fulfilled I began to feel. Some deeply rooted childhood need for attention mixed with all of that.
CC: Very relatable. I too, had siblings growing up and I very much can relate to the fight for parental attention. You do like a lot of very serious acting, so I'm interested to know what or who your inspirations were growing up.
BH: Robert Munsch. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. He’s a children’s book author. And he had the most insane wild stories. That kind of influenced my imagination. I was also influenced by a really terrific drama teacher. All throughout my schooling, just about every teacher I had encouraged me to express myself through acting in a way. Some people would hate to give oral presentations on things. For me, that was the best, most fun thing in the world.
Photo: Collin Stark
CC: Was there any particular event that sparked the genesis of your career?
BH: I grew up in a small town in Ontario, Canada. They had the word out that ABC was going to shoot in this small town just outside of Peterborough nearby. So basically the idea was, instead of building this big set in a studio, they would just go to this small town and make the main street into a set. That's what they did. And you know, there's Matthew Broderick from the Music Man, Molly Shannon was in, as well as Kristen Chenoweth and Victor Garber... like really great actors. They're shooting and they had an open audition call for people who were locals. Part of the deal was they would hire local locals to be extras and I went there.
I got a costume from my drama department in school at the time and dressed up as a 1930s Music Man. And of course, you know, I get pulled out. The line was around the block, even to get into the scene. And because I had the costume on, people just assumed that I was part of the cast already. They pulled me aside for some lines and I was able to do it. And it's not like I was discovered on the set. I was upgraded from extra to principal actor, and they featured me in one of the shots.
That started it, but it’s not what changed everything. I met this playwright called Robert Ainsworth, who was writing this play called Frozen Dreams. It was about this homeless youth living with down syndrome on the streets of Toronto. He gets given this frozen turkey from this businessman at Christmas time. And it's this whole paradox of what a homeless person is supposed to do with a frozen turkey. I toured that for a year all through Canada. I was 16 or 17 at the time and that was when I knew what I was doing. Every night, I would have goosebumps on my arms. I had the acting bug which was a full, you know, pandemic of my body. And, you know, at that point, I was totally caught off guard.
CC: Is there any actor or actress that you look up to the most?
BH: Not that I idolize Mark Wahlberg, or think that he's the best actor in the world, but what I like about him is his balance between family life and work. He represents the ability to straddle both the success of being a big artist and big box office movie star, with choosing roles that can change and help reconcile people's opinions.
Photo: Jenna Berman
CC: I find that the hyper connectedness of celebrity today is a bit polarizing, especially with the topic of social media. Obviously, it's nothing new, but it can be a double edged sword. It's pretty stressful because people all have a really close view of who you are. But also, it does give you the opportunity to do something with your platform. What kind of message and impact do you hope to influence yourself?
BH: I mean, this has been a year of that. All the way from George Floyd to, you know, the pandemic. I could talk about residential schools in Canada with the killing of Native children, all the way through 1000s of examples, and there are tons of issues out there. They really wouldn't get the same kind of coverage or have the same ability to change people's perspective, if it weren’t for Hollywood's elite posting about it on social media. Really. Honestly. It wouldn't have that traction. George Floyd would have just been another person who was killed by a policeman for his race, and he wouldn't have been a thing. Now we're seeing cultural shifts because of it.
So there’s in part an obligation to be a part of it, and you won't get followed unless you produce content. So it's this real double edged sword. Like, where's the line between my privacy and maintaining a useful platform?
If I had to choose a cause, it’s a very difficult question, because there are so many things I care about, but I guess the one that I've been the most involved with to date is Habitat for Humanity. But I do try and support as many causes as I can.
CC: Would you agree then that it's more about just being a conscious citizen?
BH: Yeah. Totally.
Photo: Collin Stark
CC: I know you're quite busy with Virgin River, of course. Through filming and having to audition for other projects, how do you feel that the industry has changed through social movements and cancel culture?
BH: You know, this plays into the anxiety that I have about social media. What to post, what not to post, you know? Am I going to offend anyone? As someone who enjoys and likes to dabble in humor, I've been so restricted because I'm so afraid to say something that someone out there is going to take out to hurt someone. In previous years, humor was built on the pain of someone else. I'm watching old episodes of Modern Family and I’m caught off guard. We're talking within the last decade, you know? Some of that comedy has aged so poorly. Cancel culture has really changed the way we exist as humans. It's not that people are evil, I mean for sure there are evil people out there that need to be cancelled. I fear though that sometimes people can get cancelled too quickly without having any kind of response and I think that maybe that's a good reason to have a platform so that you can actually get a response out there if you need to.
I’m very conscious of being canceled, though. I think I said one thing about BTS once that was like “do they really need all eight of them” or like “do we have like, too many?” It was simply about how many of them were in one band, and I received major backlash. It was maybe the most responses I've ever gotten on Twitter. It was like 20,000 responses. I really didn’t mean anything. I was trying to joke about the fact that there's a pop band with 8 members. But as a white male saying something about a minority, I got into big trouble for it. I didn't think at all about being canceled because I wasn't thinking that the tweet was about anything Asian at all.
It is really, really tough. I work for Netflix and what I do reflects on that. So if what I said was not in Netflix’s code of conduct, that reflects poorly on Netflix, and I could lose my job, and that's just a real reality. So it is really tough to be candid.
Photo: Fiorella Occhipinti
CC: I think everyone's job is tied to that nowadays. Even if you're a hotshot executive, you've got hundreds of 1000s of people following you and watching everything. You have kids and I am curious about your perspectives on handling that with them growing up in the spotlight, especially seeing how modern families like the Kardashians go through the troubles they have in the past. How are you preparing yourself for that, especially while working at the same time?
BH: This is something I've had a thought on for a while. It’s totally the individual parent’s decision. Some people out there do not believe their kids should be photographed, and do not believe that people should share photos of their kids online. Instead, what they do is they share the photo, and they put like a heart over their kid's face. For me, I don't. It might be because they're bigger celebrities than I am, and maybe it could be more as a safety thing. That is valid. But my question is, why post that photo? Why post the photo at all, if you're censoring it?
I do think that it's really difficult to understand what the ramifications will be in the future. And maybe they are right, maybe it is the smartest move to shelter one’s kid from the public eye. As far as my kids, I'm very proud of them. I love them so much. Now, if ever there's ever any threat to my kids at all, I will go and track them down.
Catch more of Ben Hollingsworth on the new season of Virgin River, out now on Netflix.