Cameron Arnett’s career in Hollywood is a play with two acts.
“This acting thing chose me twice, at two different points in time,” the celebrity told CBN News.
When he first went to Tinseltown, the now-63-year-old star was not a Christian. In fact, he wasn’t really even interested in acting; as a pre-med and pre-law student planning to pursue a career as a cardiologist, work in Hollywood was, as he called it, an “accident.”
Arnett was quickly caught up in the “trappings” Hollywood offered him, though. Chasing dollar signs and stardom, the fledgling actor was taking on episodic roles on shows like “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Miami Vice” and starring in made-for-TV movies.
Along the way, though, the actor underwent a spiritual awakening.
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He had just finished filming a movie in Toronto and was back home in Los Angeles, ready to sign a contract for a new project as a character in a TV series — but something had changed within Arnett.
“I was about to sign on the dotted line and they said, ‘Oh, by the way, we want Cameron to do partial-body nudity,’ and, by that point in time, I was a Christian,” Arnett recalled. “I said, ‘I can’t do that. It violates my convictions, violates my God, my beliefs.'”
The studio offered Arnett an alternative: they would bring in a body double for the nude scenes. That solution — the actor thought — would assuage his convictions.
But it didn’t. It only served to strengthen his reservations, and it cost him significantly.
“I’m about to sign again and I feel the Holy Spirit really tap me on my shoulder and say, ‘You have to shun even the appearance of evil, because people will think that it’s you,'” Arnett said, referring to 1 Thessalonians 5:22-24. “So I dropped everything and, when I dropped everything, everybody dropped me, as well. I lost everything, lost everybody, agency and everything else and ended up, really, abandoned in California, not knowing what else I was going to do next.”
“But God had His plan and all of that was allowing … all of the life that I had put together to unravel so that God could give me exactly what He wanted,” he continued. “That’s where I find myself now, having left Hollywood behind, having made all the choices that were anti-Hollywood and really getting back into a place where Christ was the center and, in that center, I found myself once again.”
While Arnett says he “left Hollywood behind,” really, he means he left behind the worldly glamour that first lured him in — the quintessential Hollywood — in exchange for an entertainment career that is, to borrow a biblical turn of phrase, in Hollywood but not of Hollywood.
The actor, who, for many years, exchanged casting calls for altar calls as a pastor in Atlanta, still sees value in stepping into darkness — even the shadows of the movie business — to shine the light of the Gospel. The second time around, though, Arnett’s intentions were different.
“In the midst of pastoring, God basically chose me … to get back into the whole filmmaking [business] from a Christian perspective,” he said. “And it has been nothing short of miraculous ever since. Everything that has occurred has been a God move.”
Arnett went on to explain that, in 11 years, he has been part of more than 50 movies and seven television shows — all of which, he said, “has to do only with” faith-based themes.
Now starring in films like “The Forge” and “Faith of Angels,” the celebrity said he “knows” God called him back into Hollywood, now as a “Christ-centered man.”
“The whole world was so dark that [God] had to send His son [Jesus],” Arnett said. “Without Him, we are in that same darkness. We can’t throw anybody away. We are redeemed so that we might be redeemers. The whole point of discipleship is … infusing Christ into a dark space.”
He added, “To write Hollywood off is not wise, it’s not God, it’s not Scripture, it’s not Gospel.”
Now, predominately making films geared toward a Christian audience, Arnett said he wants the movies he stars in to communicate to theatergoers that “God is in love with them” and “is a sanctifier.”
“You can’t get before a holy God and [He] not correct you into more of [His] holiness,” he explained. “So to think that you will ever approach the One who is salvation Himself and not be transformed or have to transform or have to come up to His standard and level is to not understand the relationship and who He is and who you are. We are fallen man and without Him we are nothing.”
“I want the church to come away [from my movies] with that God is desperately — if I could use that word — in love with us as His children and He wants the best for us; He wants to do the best in us; He wants to do the best through us. … I want people to come away with, ‘Wow, God loves me so much that He’s found another way to show me, to tell me, to have me breathe Him in,’ and, hopefully, that will transform us into the image and likeness [of God]. … The world needs salvation and that salvation is through the church.”
You can listen to more of our conversation with Arnett in the “Quick Start” podcast above.
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