This Actor Ditched Hollywood to Follow His God-Given Convictions
By Movieguide® Contributor
Actor Cameron Arnett chose God over Hollywood and has no regrets.
In a discussion with CBN News, he shared what led him to leave the “city of angels.”
After acting in MIAMI VICE and STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, Arnett became a Christian. When offered a role that would require him to partake in nudity, he had to make a decision.
“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 suggested a body double to do the nude scenes. Although Arnett considered the alternative, he still knew it wasn’t right.
“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.’ 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.”
Looking back, Arnett sees how God had a purpose in all of this.
“Our job is to always choose Christ,” he said previously. “It’s not Christ or career. But make sure if you can only have one, that it’s Christ you choose. If you’re going to have a career, make sure He’s over it.”
“But God had His plan, and…all of the life that I had put together [had] 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.”
This mindset led Arnett to found the Christ Over Career movement.
“Arnett and his wife, BJ Arnett, are the co-founders of a movement called Christ Over Career – where believers call the Church back to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, placing Christ at the helm of every decision they make, including career choices,” ABC 4 reported.
Recently, the actor has found his home in God-honoring films such as THE FORGE and FAITH OF ANGELS. He believes that Christians need to rise up and work to redeem Hollywood.
“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. To write Hollywood off is not wise, it’s not God, it’s not Scripture, it’s not Gospel.”
Arnett has recently starred in the new series THESE STONES, which he spoke to Movieguide® about in an interview:
Actor Cameron Arnett says his role in the upcoming show THESE STONES is “a gift.”
“I’m so grateful,” he told Movieguide® of his part in the show. “[Cheryl McKay] is allowing us to really bring the humanity to the scriptural aspect of it. It’s a joy. It’s a gift to play that kind of character.”
THESE STONES follows “a young woman [who] gets drawn into a supernatural system with Bible characters working undercover to help people today,” according to the show’s website.
Arnett remarked on the humor of the show, saying, “God allows us to gain knowledge of Him through humor, [so] it’s just a wonderful thing. I can’t wait for people to really dig into it.”
“It’s scriptural, but it’s funny and quirky at the same time, and so we get to laugh at ourselves, we get to laugh at them, and we get to kind of go through the whole journey with each other as an audience and with the characters,” he continued.
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