Christopher Atkins: Drinking cost me my Footloose break
Christopher Atkins is looking back at the Hollywood break that slipped away — and the tough circumstances that came with losing it.
On stage at Fanboy Expo Knoxville in Tennessee, Christopher Atkins told the crowd he showed up to meet the Footloose team after he’d been drinking—and the audition evaporated on the spot. The 65-year-old said the meeting happened anyway, but he was in no shape to convince anyone he could lead a dance movie.
“I was a mess back then. I was partying it up way too much, and they called me in,” Atkins recalled. “I was so messed up that they said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to have to pass on this guy.’”
The part of Ren McCormack in Footloose (1984) went to Kevin Bacon, whose star-making turn and the film’s monster soundtrack cemented both in pop culture, eventually spawning the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game. Atkins, who has been sober for nearly 40 years, said he can now look back at the near-miss with clear eyes.
Early fame, wild ripple effects
Atkins became a phenomenon with The Blue Lagoon (1980), plucked from more than 4,000 hopefuls and earning a Golden Globe nomination. His beach-god breakout even sent a herpetologist chasing down a newly documented species—the Fiji crested iguana—after spotting it in publicity materials tied to the film.
What he’s doing now
Missed Footloose or not, Atkins has a busy slate across action, crime and genre projects:
- Heavy Hitters — plays Mike Burns; currently filming
- Prism — plays DEA Agent Shane Carter in a dramatic thriller
- Out for Vengeance — plays Detective John Grant in an action feature
- The Curse of the Gorgon — plays Bates in a modern horror-fantasy rooted in ancient mythology