At age 31, actor Chad Allen has spent 25 years in front of the camera, in a prolific career of equal measures television, stage and screen. As confident as he is ebullient, Allen’s energy and easy charm find a natural symmetry with a challenging dual-role in End of the Spear, where Allen embodies real-life, father and son Nate and Steve Saint, both missionaries in the Ecuadorian rainforest, both coming face to face with the indigenous Waodani, the most violent tribe ever known to man. Father Nate and four other Christian missionaries lost their lives tragically at the end of a Waodani spear in 1956. Son Steve’s work took him back to the tribe of his father’s killer, chief Mincayani, where the two became lifelong friends and family—bonded by ghosts of the past and love in the present.

I caught up with him recently to talk about End of the Spear, the perception of missionaries in the world today, his passion for acting and just what it’s like to be an uncompromising individual like Chad Allen in the movie business today.

Lee Shoquist, ReelMovieCritic: What were your thoughts about this film when you first read the script?

Chad Allen: It was a killer opportunity for me. I read the script and I didn’t know these guys and hadn’t heard of this story before. I saw it as a really amazing story about forgiveness and the transformational power of love, which to me doesn’t have anything to do with religion or politics. I wanted to play both characters and I wanted to go live for three months in the jungles of Panama.

LS: It must have been intimidating with Steve Saint standing by, watching you play him!

CA: Steve is awesome, but it was intimidating because I knew I had to develop his character, which was part Steve, the person and part Steve, the movie character. I really needed to find his humanity. When you meet him in the movie, you don’t meet this larger than life character, you meet a scared, conflicted, confused person. I needed to find those qualities and that was a challenge. When I met Steve Saint in real life, I was immediately struck by his behavior and his energy. Secondly, he was conflicted and weighed down by the pressure of bringing this story to film. He had shepherded this story for so many years, doing justice to it, so I was grateful for that and those characteristics as well.

LS: During shooting, how close did you get to actual tribal living?

CA: Not as close in Panama, but I was invited by the tribe to live with them after we finished making the film. So I traveled to the wild territory, lived with them for a short time, and learned to thatch our own roofs and build our huts. Not so sure vacation is the right word considering when we left the jungle we couldn’t have any solid food!

LS: There is controversy about the role of missionaries. What are your thoughts through the lens of this film?

CA: I think it’s a different concept now than it was then. One of the fascinating things was to look at the way the world viewed missionaries in 1956 as opposed to today. Today it’s almost a dirty word, and I understand that. Steve will talk to you about missionaries going in and wiping out cultures! If this movie was about promoting missionaries, Christianity, or a belief system, I wouldn’t have been interested. It is a story about the transformational spirit of love and how that can change the human soul.

LS: So it’s about the human capacity for change and the human spirit.

CA: I did a theater project called "What Happens When," where we took a group of actors in New York and Los Angeles, and put them to work in the community, for something that appeals to their hearts or souls—service work. And we watched how that changed the human spirit. And that’s what it’s about to me. You can come to this movie with politics and religious divide and those things, and I think you’ll stick around to find out that love—you can call it ‘God’ if you like—is what it’s about.

LS: You’re often spoken about as one of the "out" celebrities in Hollywood, and this movie has decidedly pronounced Christian angles. It’s silly, but many often seem to mistake ‘gay’ and ‘Christian’ as being mutually exclusive.

CA: I was really excited that they wanted me to be a part of this film. Part of my preconceived notion when they asked me to do it was, 'Do they really want me to be a part of it?' Because of my preconceived notions! I went to the producers to make sure they understood who I was, and they pulled out The Advocate and said, ‘The same things you talk about in this article, in terms of spirituality, are the same things Steve Saint fought his whole life for. There are probably people on both sides of this supposed divide that are not happy that we chose you, or you chose us, but we can work together.’

LS: Why do you think gays and Christians seem to have such problems co-existing, and what did you learn making the film?

CA: It’s just fear. We’ve been hurt before. That’s where you go to for protection; defense. As a group, we learned a lot making this movie. Steve and I just looked at our relationship as the model of that. We started off with preconceived notions, scared of each other and not sure, but agreeing on one thing—that we both believed in a higher power called God, and that the same God must be listening to both of our prayers, and if he didn’t want either one of us here, we probably wouldn’t be here. We made a commitment to each other that we would help each other through. We were in tears (later) because we were going to miss one another because we had become such good friends.

LS: The final scene between Louie Leonardo, who plays Mincayani, and yourself, as Steve Saint, is undeniably powerful.

CA: Much of what you see in that final scene is actually improvised in a sense that the director would let the camera roll as Louie and I made our way through the scene. At one point, I got so frustrated because he was sticking so strictly to the phonetics of the speech and I wanted to play from the heart, and I’d get so frustrated and scream, ‘Tell me, just tell me!’ In reality, I was saying, ‘Give me- just give me something!’ The director loved it! There’s a lot of discovery in that scene. Emotionally, as you watch it, I go all over. It goes from a sense of peace and calm to discovery to gratitude to a sudden, violent burst of anger.

LS: What makes acting your passion?

CA: I just did a show in New York for months on end. People say, ‘Doesn’t that get boring?’ When it was over, I still wanted to know this, and every single night I got shot and died. I’d be just about to go out there and have a good fight with this guy and I’d think, ‘Tonight I’m going to win.’ And then I’d hit the floor dead and go, ‘How did I get here? That sounds crazy. It’s always moving and changing. I can’t explain to you how to get a great performance; it still confuses the hell out of me. You hope for divine inspiration, first and foremost. That’s what I go for every time. And if that doesn’t work you have to be able to back it up with tools!

LS: You’ve been doing this for 25 years now, and you’re only 31. What keeps you alive is this industry?

CA: I have many times thought I was done. In fact, shortly before I went to shoot End of the Spear, I thought, ‘Well, maybe I’m done. Maybe I’ve done what I came here to do, and the politics of it are annoying,’ and I really just turned the whole thing over to my understanding of a higher power—God. I thought maybe I should teach oceanography, because I was into that. I was an oceanography and marine biology major and I had taught some, and really enjoyed that.

Simultaneously from that, two things came up—a production company that I’m now a part of, and End of the Spear. I really haven’t stopped acting again. It’s been fun and interesting, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it. I’m surprised. I really thought I was done. That has happened several times during my career. I’ve gone out and tried other things, but I get pulled back to it!