Announcer Finds His Calling on the Silver Screen

Tony Bentley and Steve Carell on the set of 'The Big Short' | courtesy Tony Bentley

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Tony Bentley has landed some dream jobs, even if they never were his dream. Bentley wanted to call the Kentucky Derby or land the announcer's job at Santa Anita. Though he's still in the midst of a distinguished career as a racetrack announcer, he never achieved those goals. Then again, has Tom Durkin, Dave Johnson or Trevor Denman ever acted in an Oscar-winning movie?

Bentley has had parts in two, 'Dallas Buyer's Club' and 2013 Picture of the Year '12 Years a Slave.' And when this year's Academy Award winners are announced, he's all but sure to be able to add a third Academy Award-winning film to his list as he played the role of Bruce Miller in this year's Best Picture, 'The Big Short.'

Bentley was the regular announcer at the Fair Grounds from 1974 to 2001 and has also called races at Delaware Park, Canterbury Downs, Louisiana Downs and a number of other tracks. Today, he is the regular voice of the National Steeplechase Association tracks and spends much of his year traveling the jump circuit.

That still gives him time to pursue his other career: acting.

“In New Orleans, I did some local theater in the late 70s, 80s,” Bentley said. “I had an agent from doing voice-overs and commercials. In 2004, they started to make a number of movies and television programs in Louisiana because the state decided to give the companies a major tax break. I still live in New Orleans and my agent started to send me out on movie auditions. I got my first job in 2004 playing a doctor on a Lifetime movie (Miracle Run) with Mary Louise Parker. It just kept going from there.”

Bentley usually is the guy in the movie you never really notice. He's more than an “extra,” but his characters usually come and go in his movies within a matter of a few minutes. While his role in 'The Big Short' was a typical one, it comes in a pivotal scene.

The movie follows a select few who realized well ahead of the rest of the pack that millions could be made “shorting” something called collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, that were made up largely of mortgages. To a larger and larger extent, the CDOs were filled with shaky mortgages, and when the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit, those who had shorted CDOs were rewarded with huge profits for their prescience.

Steve Carrell is one of the many stars of the movie and plays Mark Baum, a Wall Streeter with both morals and smarts who is among the first to realize what is about to happen with the housing market. Bentley plays Bruce Miller, a self-described bull, who squares off with Carrell's character onstage at a conference. Miller, who comes off as arrogant and buffoonish, insists that there is nothing to fear when it comes to the market and touts buying Bear Stearns stock. Unbeknownst to him, the price of Bear Stearns stock is crashing literally while he is praising it as a solid buy.

Not only was Bentley not intimated by working with an actor with Carrell's prestige, he spent much of the morning rehearsing not even knowing who was sitting across from him.

“It turned out that Steve is the nicest guy in the world,” he said. “But when we started to rehearse I didn't recognize him. I had just watched Foxcatcher, but I don't watch a lot of TV and he's kind of a chameleon-like guy. When you get the 'call sheet' for the day in the tour trailer it lists the person's name and the character they are playing, but for the big stars they use a fictitious name. I guess they worry that if someone finds out that a Brad Pitt is going to be at such and such a place at a certain time there could be problems. Of course, I haven't reached that stage. No one cares about me.

“So we go out to rehearse this scene and I don't recognize him and I have no idea who I'm working with. When we finished, just trying to make small talk, I said, 'You've got a lot of lines here, you're going to earn your pay.' A couple of hours later we were ready to shoot the scene and right before that a friend who was an extra asked me, 'What was working with Steve Carrell like?' It wasn't until then that I knew who I was working with. After it was over he came up to me and introduced himself. I wound up eating lunch with him and his agent during a break. He couldn't have been nicer.”

Bentley has gotten a lot of acting work because Louisiana has become “Hollywood South” due to the tax incentives to make a film there. Bentley's scene in The Big Short was shot inside an office building in New Orleans.

While Bentley would love the opportunity to take on larger roles, he said it's unlikely to happen as long as he stays in New Orleans.

“It's a goal and I would love for that to happen; who wouldn't?” he said. “But I'm not going to pick up and move to, say, Los Angeles or New York. The stars are the stars. The other roles, the ones larger than the ones I get, those are all cast basically out of Los Angeles and New York. I'm 64. I'm thrilled with what I have. I'm not going to study with Lee Strasberg or whoever the current Lee Strasberg is. I would be thrilled to do bigger parts and if it ever happens, fine.”

You'll be able to see plenty more of Bentley in 2016 and the years ahead, as he has taken part in several projects that have yet have to hit the cinemas, including a movie called 'Billionaire Boys Club,' starring Kevin Spacey and Emma Roberts. In it, he plays “Yet Another Shareholder,” not exactly the kind of role that will land him on the cover of People Magazine. On that, Bentley doesn't care.

“You can't imagine how lucky I feel to be doing what I am doing,” he said. “All of these movies, it's fun. It's an amazing experience.”

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