Cowboy realizes acting prowess while starring in film about self

Forget the Marlboro Man. Such masculine posturing and evocation of the Old West no longer represent the cowboy ideal.

To see what does, watch “The Rider,” starring newcomer Brady Jandreau, a soft-spoken yet determined 22-year-old Lakota cowboy.

The semiautobiographical film, set to open next month in central Ohio theaters, depicts a story whose stakes are literally life and death.

Jandreau, once a rising star on the rodeo circuit and a gifted horse trainer, was bucked off a horse during a competition on April 1, 2016. He’d been thrown off before, but this time the horse stepped on his head, partially crushing his skull.

When Jandreau woke up from a three-day coma, doctors advised him never to ride again. He now had a metal plate in his head, so another fall could be fatal.

The news devastated the cowboy, who was just 20 at the time.

Ultimately, he didn’t. Six weeks after the accident, he resumed training wild horses and riding. He even got bucked off again — although, he said: “This time I didn’t hit my head. I got back on.”

Jandreau doesn’t do everything he once did but is able to do most things.

“I ride all kinds of bucking broncos, just not at rodeos,” he said. “I’d rather risk my life than not ride again. I know my capabilities.”

He simply wants to get on with it.

“Many people try to control their life instead of just living it. After my head injury, I realized that there’s a lot you can’t control. It’s better to worry about the things you can.

“I feel being a horseman is what God put me here to do,” Jandreau continued. “But maybe he wants me to do something else as well. Because of ‘The Rider,’ I’ve been meeting all kinds of new people and finding something (acting) I’m equally passionate about.”

Sitting in the garden of a West Hollywood hotel, Jandreau showed calm, purpose and presence during a recent interview.

Such qualities are what struck Chloe Zhao — writer, director and producer of “The Rider.” She wanted to make a film about his struggles, both physical and emotional, as he came to terms with his injury.

“I met Brady while shooting my first film, ‘Songs My Brothers Taught Me’ (2015), on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota,” she said in a separate interview.

Zhao believed so strongly in Jandreau’s saga of his lifethreatening accident and his eventual recovery that she financed the film herself.

“It was what my credit card could afford and what was left in my bank account,” she said.

The gamble paid off: “The Rider” was picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics and has won numerous awards.

Zhao didn’t need long to sense that Jandreau could manage the lead role himself.

“I was 80 percent sure a few hours after meeting him and seeing him interact with a horse,” she said. “That kind of presence is what I was looking for — the ability to be present with another person on camera.

“Brady seems to have a natural gift. Everything else I could teach him or fake. That’s the magic of filmmaking.”

Jandreau took the challenge seriously.

“This is the first acting I’ve ever done,” he said. “I enjoyed it, even doing the grocery-store scenes, which are completely fictional.”

Unlike in the film, his real-life mother is still alive and his problem with hand seizures resulted from bull riding, not the head injury.

“In the scenes where I’m not wearing my hat, I’m out of my comfort zone,” Jandreau said, “but I kind of feel I can be myself.”

He credited Zhao with “making acting seem easy. She definitely could reach me so I could reach what I needed to do.”

Zhao cast Jandreau’s father and sister and many of his friends as characters based on themselves. She also featured his best friend, promising bull rider Lane Scott, in some heartbreaking scenes. Scott himself is slowly recovering from a serious accident. At the time of filming, he was unable to walk or speak.

For Jandreau, horses have been a constant since infancy.

“I sat on my first horse when I was 15 days old,” he said. “I actually could control a horse without assistance when I was 18 months old. I wasn’t pottytrained yet, so I was wearing a diaper. I’d slide off to one side, but my parents made sure I didn’t fall.”

During his recovery, he gradually realized that he didn’t want to give up horse training. Today, he is married and has a 9-month-old daughter, Tawnee Bay. He and his wife, Terri Dawn, run Jandreau Performance Horses, based in Rockyford, South Dakota.

Two years after the accident, he’s exactly where he wants to be, he said.

“I’ll always be a horseman before anything else. That’s gotten me about everything I would ever ask for in life.”