i got enough to keep me going, keep me from the brink

Natalie Brager and Brett Jones met as most people do, through their work. Both of them were teachers in high school, Natalie taught History and Brett taught Chemistry. Their romance was typical, dated for two years, engaged for one and then married on a warm spring day in front of their closest friends and family. They were the spitting image of a happy family, from the puppy they got together, to the three healthy children they had. Dash Brager Jones was born to the couple a year after they got married, and he was quickly followed by Zoe and Finn. Growing up, Dash shared his room with his siblings and from a young age dreamed of going out on his own and doing big things. He wanted to be on stage, wanted to be in front of a crowd and when he was young he would drag his siblings into acting out plays that he thought up himself. From dramatic plays to what he thought were comedies, every spare bit of time he had was spent pretending he was on the big screen. Going to the movies was paramount to Christmas and Santa for him, and being able to stay up late Friday nights to watch TV was even better. His eyes were always for the movies.

Being teachers, Natalie and Brett encouraged this as much as they could, putting him in local plays and getting him into a few local commercials. Of course, the few commercials were not enough for Dash, and eventually with enough bugging he got Natalie to take him and get him signed up with a talent agency. It was there that Dash got his first taste of disappointment as he went to audition after audition, now and again getting a small role in a commercial but nothing solid. In 1997 he was cast as Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, and as someone who had grown up watching the movies he was ecstatic about it, and so were his parents. It was a dream come true for him, he was finally going to become a big name actor and get an Oscar. It was all of his dreams coming true at once.

However, the reality wasn’t everything he expected. The movie had come with high expectations from fans, and the movie hadn’t met them. His parents shielded him from the brunt of the harder comments, but a few still filtered through to him. It was a wake up call for Dash, a slap to the face with the harsh reality of what the movie business was actually about, aside from the fame and fortune. But if anything, Dash was stubborn and he knew there were good parts and so he kept his head down and kept going for auditions. The next couple of years were a series of smaller roles, working his acting around his schooling. His parents were still teachers and they wanted him to learn – although at this point his parents had started to homeschool so he could work around the schedule he had. For most of high school, he alternated his time between Toronto and Los Angeles, or wherever he was supposed to be shooting at the time.

It wasn’t until he graduated school and turned eighteen that he made the final move out to LA, living on his own and leaving his close knit family back in Toronto. It was different being out on his own at that point, living in a small apartment and going to as many auditions as he could get too. Getting cast in Terminator Salvation was almost a blessing for Dash, it felt like he could get his name out there, but just like Star Wars it felt like the fans were expecting more and he was stuck in a position where it didn’t give them what they wanted. His response was to keep his head low and keep working, going to as many auditions as he could, determined to prove to himself and to everyone else that he could do this, and that he was cut out for this life – despite the harsher critics who placed some of the blame on two subpar franchise movies on him. He retreated to TV, keeping to smaller roles and eventually voice acting to keep his face out of the public eye as much as he could. He was getting anxious with everything, over analyzing everything he did trying to make it as good as he could.

When Dash got the script for Sharknado, he was thirty seconds from turning it down, not wanting to be in another movie that ended up as a never-ending joke. It wasn’t until his agent mentioned that it might be good for him to be in one of these movies, so over the top and ridiculous that anything else he did, or had done, could only be good by comparison and he was more than ready to stop hearing the negative comments. So he took the role, and the movie did better than he expected, much to his amusement. It had been fun to film, and even more fun to watch everything and it allowed him to relax and to stop worrying about his career as much as he had been. He had had more fun filming that movie than he had in a long time. It reminded him why he was doing this in the first place.

Getting the role of Reed Richards in the updated Fantastic Four movies was a dream come true for him, as well as his worst nightmare. He had had a history of sequels that were not well loved in general and when his casting was announced there was a series of articles that mentioned his previous luck, and despite the new thought process of just taking things as they were, he felt his anxiety return, choosing to keep his head down as much as he could and just do his best to ignore everything else going on around him.