By Linda Barnard Staff Reporter The Star
Sat., Feb. 20, 2016
Stephan James had some trouble sleeping the other night — for a reason that would make sense to anyone in this city.
The 22-year-old, who was born in Scarborough, has a potential star-making role as Olympic track legend Jesse Owens in Race and is achieving an unexpected level of fame: a friend had sent James a photo of his face fully covering the side of a subway car.
“I used to ride the TTC, like, every day and now my face is blown up all over the TTC, a train,” James said, sharing the image on his phone a few hours before the drama’s Toronto premiere. “It blew my mind, really.”
James, the middle child of three boys, has worked steadily as an actor since he was 16 and still a student at Jarvis Collegiate Institute.
He credits his older brother, Shamier Anderson, who plays Owens’ track rival Eulace Peacock in Race, as the one who inspired him to also get into acting.
“He was just someone in front of me, somebody who was tangible, who I could see and say, he was doing incredible work and maybe I can follow in his footsteps in some capacity,” said James.
ike many other young Canadian actors, James cut his teeth on Degrassi: The Next Generation (later Degrassi). His maturity and focus, which anybody who works with him seems to remark upon, quickly took him to other, bigger things.
“I’ve racked my brain to think of one other Canadian black actor who has had this kind of success in the U.S.,” said filmmaker Floyd Kane, who produced and wrote the script for Across the Line, where James stars as a striving hockey player. The movie opens April 8.