Press Kit (1982) About the Players - Christopher Atkins
Christopher Atkins waited for some time after his success in "Blue Lagoon" before he accpeted another movie role. When producer David Joseph offered him the male lead in "The Pirate Movie" it turned out to be just the part he had been waiting for.
"It looked like a lot of fun; it just looked like a film I'd want to see," he says.
Twenty-year-old Atkins explained his caution about his second motion picture. "It's not that I haven't been offered other parts. It's just that Hollywood's a very scary place for somebody who had no intention of being there in the first place."
Atkins is still very mindful of his rapid rise to stardoom in "Blue Lagoon."
Unitl the summer of 1978, he was a high school student looking forward "to going off with all my friends to have a really good time" in college where he was planning to study medecine.
He was reaching sailing as a summer job and the mother of one of his students offered to send his photograph to a small modeling agency that represented her own family.
Only a week later he got his first modeling job and this led quickly to an offer from the Ford Agency.
He remembers that he got home from his first appointment with the Ford Agency to discover that they had set up an audition for him for "Blue Lagoon."
Until then, Atkins had seen his modeling activities as a "side job to get some money for college."
But, from the time he was chosed for "Blue Lagoon," his life changed dramatically, first filming in Fiji with Brooke Shields and, later, touring all over the world to promote the pciture.
"It was very strange for me," he recalls. "The last two, two-and-a-half years -- from the very start to now, everything's been new or different."
Atkings had spent his early years in Palos Verde, California, but his family moved to Rye, New York, when he was 13. After "Blue Lagoon," he was signed to a contract by Columbia and decided to move to California and buy his own house in Los Angeles.
While waiting to decide on his next feature film, he agreed to make an NBC-TV movie, "Raid on Short Creek," which was shot in mid-1981. Then, after careful consideration, he decided to make "The Pirate Movie," his second theatrical motion picture.
"The second movie was going to be real test to see what was going to happen for me in this business -- whether this was really what I wanted to do or not," he admits. His positive reaction to making "The Pirate Movie" had already led him to accpet a starring role in a third film, "Terrible Game," for Raymond Chos and Golden Harvest Productions.
Atkins remainds a keen sportsman in his spare time. As a sailor, he has raced in official competitions, as well as teaching. And he loves football, scuba-diving, baseball, and fishing -- "anything outdoors."
After "The Pirate Movie," he is hoping to spend some time diving with Ron and Valarie Taylor, two Australian underwater filming specialists whom he befriended during the shooting of "Blue Lagoon." His great desire at the moment is to dive with thim in protective cages in the Great Australian Bight, in southern Australian waters, where white sharks are prevalent.
He remains very close to his family. His stepfather and mother and hus sister and two brothers still live in Rye and he visits them as often as he can.
