Christopher Smith

**Name:** Christopher Ian Benedict Smith

**Position:** Actor and Director for Shangri-La Entertainment

**Metatype:** Elf (*Homo sapiens nobilis*)

**DOB:** 6/11/2028, Chelsea, London, UK

**Education:** Masters of Classical Acting, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts

**Family:** Jeremy Smith (father, London UK), Lorraine Vercet (mother, Paris, France), Carmen di Blassio (Stepmother, London UK), Ailin O'Neill (ex-husband, Dublin, Tír na nÓg), Ramon Caliente [Ramon Castillo] (husband, Los Angeles, PCC)

Despite having the kind of career that nearly any other actor would consider a rousing success, Christopher 'Topher' Smith has always struggled to live up to what he thinks he should be. Growing up in the shadow of his father, famous character actor, noted Shakespearean and The Guy you went to for an upper-class Elven Villain in any major Sim of the 40's and 50's, Sir Jeremy Smith, it was never a question that young Topher would end up going on stage, just as it was never any question that he wouldn't be able to replicate his father's greatness.

Sir Jeremy spent a great deal of his life fighting against stereotypes of elven actors in the UK, staunchly opposing the actions of the elven nation of Tír na nÓg (despite its trendiness at the time) and avoiding any association with the growing 'Elfsploitation' genre, which he felt was cheap and reductive, which of course led to his famous media beef with elfsploitation legend Locryn Day in the mid-2050's. Ironically, one of his most famous main-stream roles was the as borderline elfsploitation anti-hero Kearos Navarim in the Neil the Ork Barbarian sim "Dawn of Earth" (2057) and "Atlantis Must Fall!" (2060).

For most of his early life, Topher followed in his famous father's footsteps, studying at St. Catherine's College Cambridge, the London Academy of Music and the Dramatic Arts and then doing his turn at the RSC. The 2050's were largely spent on the London stage, with Topher trying to define himself in opposition to his father, even going so far as to briefly marry a native of the Tír and appearing as 'Pavi Largo' in Frederick-Stanley's 2053 elfsploitation remake of "REPO!: The Genetic Opera".

His efforts to define himself as a distinct artist only really took off with his transition to North American Sim-ema in the mid-2060's, post-Crash, as his bland good looks and convincing American accent gave him a successful run as the leading man in a string of commercial successful, critically ignorable Horizon action sims, most notably the action thriller "Escape from Chicago" (2067) and the EuroWars epic "Nighthawks Over Warsaw" (2071) and earned him a small but profitable following.

Thus, it was a turning point moment for Topher when in late 2074 he was signed to reprise his father's role in Eric Jonrosh's remake of "Dawn of Earth". And it was a safe pick for the studio (Shangri-La North Entertainment, a Horizon Company) to head up the production when Jonrosh's troubled shooting had to be terminated. If Shangri-La thought he would just finish the editing and clean up the mess, they were pleasantly surprised when they got more than they bargained for. Smith took the mish-mash of sense-recordings and the abstract "script" Jonrosh had left behind and re-edited the sim into a commercially-viable product, and even gave it a new, catchier title "Earthdawn". Does this mark a new phase in Topher's career? Only time will tell...

**Return to: Horizon**