James Landry Hebert: Rising star charts his course as an actor

James Landry Hebert presents an amiable figure as he approaches, with an infectious grin and casual gait.
He’s wearing a cowboy hat, jeans, Navajo print shirt and a sheepskin-collared coat, belaying his origins as a Charenton boy who is charting a steady and successful trajectory as an actor in Hollywood.
In fact, local television viewers have probably seen him on the screen in their homes already: Hebert has donned an impressive roster of roles on such series as Netflix’s runaway hit Stranger Things, HBO’s equally popular Westworld, Marvel’s Agent Carter and NBC’s Taken, as well as supporting roles in studio films like J.J. Abrams’ Super 8, Warner Bros. Gangster Squad, not to mention lead roles in indie films such as Two Step, Carnage Park, Ghosthouse and Carter & June.
A quick search on IMDB.com reveals, “Some would say that actor James Hebert was born in Lafayette, Louisiana in 1984. Others would argue that after spending most of his adolescence on an Indian reservation (Chitimacha), the storyteller was born while studying theater at Louisiana State University. And still others, James included, believe his birth is an ever on-going process that grows closer with each new role.”
The film Texas Killing Fields was a “game changing” role where he met cast member Stephen Graham’s manager, Ben Levine, who went to college in New Orleans and came to visit the set; James advised them to stay off of Bourbon Street and stick to Frenchman Street in their leisure time. He joined them when he wrapped, and ended up waking up to a management firm in Hollywood who set him up with his agent, Samantha Crisp, at one of the oldest agencies in Hollywood, the Kohner agency. Paul Kohner was known for being Marilyn Monroe’s agent.
There’s another uniqueness to Hebert’s childhood: He lost his parents when he was young, and he was adopted by a Chitimacha couple, Ted and Rhonda Darden, who raised him. He was likely the first non-Indian to attend the tribal school. He is still close to the tribe, and he hopes to work on story-telling projects with youth. “I don’t think I realized how unique that was,” he said in retrospect. “But I feel like my Chitimacha pride has only grown.”
An orphan and evacuee who thought he wanted to work in the music business until he returned to his beleaguered home state after hurricane Katrina, James discovered a growing Hollywood boomtown which he was only too eager to take part in. Cutting his teeth as Brad Pitt’s stand-in on The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons led to work in casting extras with local casting director Elizabeth Coulon, which he calls his “second education.” But it wasn’t until his turn as “talent agent” Mitch Racine in Warner Bros.’ Gangster Squad, that James’s career lived up to his talent.
Two-Step, his first feature lead, premiered at South by Southwest with glowing reviews, most notably for James’ work. Since that time he’s been called “the nicest bad guy you’ll ever meet” and, in addition to James’ commitment to Native American, environmental and animal activism, he continues to collaborate with some of the most respected actors, writers and directors of this generation.
It hasn’t come easy, but “it feels like a fairytale.” James has just wrapped one of his favorite characters he’s played to date in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He shares the screen with actors such as Pitt, who actually remembered him as his earlier stand-in, and was pleasantly not-surprised James had come so far in such a short period of 10 years.
Ever since Hebert and Chickasaw Films took on the The Chickasaw Rancher, the story of a Chickasaw cattleman along the Chisolm Trail, his career is coming full circle.
He has started an Original Storytellers program to help give the power of storytelling back to the original storytellers by inviting Hollywood filmmakers to visit tribal schools to teach native youth the art of storytelling today.
In five years? “I would like to have told my story and for the modern world to be able to see a film about being adopted by locals, Ted and Rhonda Darden, which allowed me to be one of the first non-natives to attend the Chitimacha tribal school.”
Hebert said that was “an experience that strongly shaped how I interact with the world and for which I am forever grateful. I’d also like that same world to know how we pronounce Hebert down the bayou. If they can’t do that, I’ll settle for Landry. Equally as Cajun, but easier to pronounce,” he laughed. “Beyond that I’d like to do my part in preserving the culture of the village that raised me by producing Acadian and Native American entertainment and creating incentives in Washington to encourage producers in Hollywood to tell more stories set in south Louisiana. Now that I’m doing what I love for a living…I have a platform for what I’d like to see change in the world.”
After exploring his sense of duty as a series regular as the safe-cracking, magic-tricking, gun-wielding spy known as “Rem” on NBC’s Taken series, Hebert camped out in a tipi in the midst of a blizzard during the Standing Rock pipeline protests. He says art continued to meet life while working with actress and Taken co-star Jennifer Beals, who raised money and supplies which she and Hebert delivered in person. He stayed in support of the fight for Mother Nature.
“I stayed long enough to get an apartment there where I housed the cold water rescue team,” he said. “I was able to join, given a particular set of skills I learned on the Bayou Teche. I left Taken in Toronto to vote, and feeling like I could make a difference, but after the battle at Standing Rock, I felt otherwise. But that’s what led me to believe that movies were the secret weapon with which we could all use to influence culture for the greater good. And that’s when the Original Storytellers program was born.”
Look for James on the big screen in Tim Sutton’s The Donnybrook, set to hit theaters on Feb. 15.
He added that fledgling actors can get a start the same way he did by signing up as an extra at:
www.mycastingfile.com.