Colleyville actor Arthur Redcloud has memorable role in ‘The Revenant’

It’s a bright, clear morning, verging on afternoon, and Arthur Redcloud is getting ready to dig into lunch at one of his favorite places, Asia Bowl, a strip-mall eatery in west Fort Worth.

But this meal of fried rice isn’t going to be quite as, well, interesting as what he hungrily devours in the film The Revenant, the brutal 19th-century story of survival in the wilderness, in which the Colleyville resident co-stars with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy. His Revenant protein of choice? Raw bison organs.

Even though DiCaprio has talked in the media about how opposite of delicious this uncooked liver lunch was, it was no big thing for the 43-year-old cop turned fuel-truck driver turned actor in a movie that’s nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

“All Native Americans have taken that kind of food ... and used it in their ceremonies and traditional ways,” he says quietly. “To me, it wasn’t just that the script was saying to do it or what the director wanted me to do. It was great to eat it. It was almost like taking bread and drinking wine in some churches.”

Redcloud’s low-key attitude reflects his approach to his sudden Hollywood fame playing the character of Hikuc, a Pawnee Indian who uses traditional medicine to physically and spiritually heal DiCaprio’s character of Hugh Glass, who was left for dead after a savage bear attack.

In fact, Redcloud — who has appeared in smaller films and documentaries — almost didn’t even go after the role. “I saw [the casting call] online on Facebook that Leo DiCaprio was calling for a lot of native actors so I thought it would be great to look into it,” he says of the auditions in Santa Fe, N.M. “[But] I wasn’t going to go, but I got talked into it.”

So he took time off from his truck-driving job and hit the road for New Mexico. He made the first cut and thought that might be as far as he would go.

“I ended up going further. A week or so later, they called me back and [said] we’re going to have you go with our coach. Another two weeks went by and they said, ‘Oh, we really loved you.’ ”

That meant more auditions in Los Angeles and in western Canada, where much of the film would be shot, with director Alejandro González Iñárritu, known for such films as Birdman, Babel and 21 Grams.

Though initially Redcloud didn’t know which role he might get, he ended up with the plum part of Hikuc. “It was a major humbling experience to see that,” he says. “I was just in shock sometimes how it came out.”

Redcloud admits he was initially intimidated about working on a film with an estimated budget of $135 million that not only stars DiCaprio and Hardy but other such noted rising stars as Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter.

“I was [intimidated] at first but it was more about getting to know who they are and what they’re about. Basically, it was a spiritual thing for me,” he says. “I want to know what their spirits are like and see if I could connect. I was very impressed with them.”

Tough environment

Of course, the shoot wasn’t all about sitting around a campfire eating s’mores and making new friends. Stories about how grueling the filming was have been making news for months now.

If you’re a director who doesn’t mind having many people on your crew quit in exhaustion — as reportedly happened with The Revenant — then film a movie during winter in the wilds of Montana, British Columbia, and Alberta. The Hollywood Reporter headlined its story “How Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘The Revenant’ shoot became ‘a living hell.’ ”

Redcloud says the shoot was as rough as everyone has heard. “I think even rougher,” he says. “But it was [about] sticking through it and making it look real ... The toughest part? Dealing with the cold.”

Speaking of reality, Redcloud says it was also difficult portraying himself as a speaker of the Pawnee language. “I wanted to do a service to the tribe and the nation right,” he says. “I wanted to do them honorably. I wanted to do them respectfully.”

Moving from Arizona

Redcloud’s background wouldn’t seem to lead to a career in Hollywood.

Of Navajo descent, he was raised in Arizona and flirted with the idea of becoming a medicine man like his grandfather. But instead he pursued law enforcement, first in Albuquerque, N.M., then, 11 years ago, with the sheriff’s department in Dallas while studying crime-scene investigation at the University of North Texas. From there, he switched to truck driving (“I was looking for something that paid really well”) and he ended up in Tarrant County because a friend of his needed a roommate.

Acting has been something he has dabbled in, though he says he has been lucky that, unlike some other Native American actors, he hasn’t run into producers who want him to be a stereotype or disrespect his culture. (Most recently, controversy swirled around the set for the Adam Sandler comedy The Ridiculous Six as several Native Americans actors and others behind the scenes walked out because, as one Apache cultural consultant said, the film “was a total disgrace.”)

“I’ve heard about [sets like that] but I haven’t been on one like that,” Redcloud says. “Most of the sets I’ve been to have really made sure that they have someone there — like they did with [The Revenant], they had a speech person for the Pawnee. They had an ambassador for the tribe up there [in Canada] in the places we were going. ...There were a lot of people representing the First Nations [people].”

Redcloud says he hopes to attend the Academy Awards on Feb. 28 and doesn’t want to comment on the Oscar boycott by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith over the lack of people of color among the 20 nominees in the main acting categories.

If he does end up jetting out to L.A. for the ceremony, don’t expect him to make the move west permanent — at least not yet.

“I probably won’t give up the day job,” he says with a laugh, “but, maybe, someday soon, depending on what comes up next.

“I’m just looking at things right now,” he continues. “I’m just being careful and not jumping into everything.”

This story was originally published January 28, 2016 at 2:03 PM with the headline "Colleyville actor Arthur Redcloud has memorable role in ‘The Revenant’."