Charles Sloan, a movie currently on Prime and other streaming services, stars former Bristol Bay salmon fisherman Mark Costello in the leading role. At age 73, Costello has been off the water for a decade or so, but his experience in the fishery goes back to1978, when an old classmate from the University of Washington invited him to come north and give salmon fishing a try.
“It sounded like a good way to make money to keep acting,” says Costello. “Back then it was all canneries. We fished for a company called Red Salmon, and our boat was number RS21, an old wooden double-ender. All we had was a compass, a chart, and a CB radio. And we pulled our nets by hand.”
While fishing was in some ways a means to an end for Costello, enabling him to live in Hollywood and pursue his acting career, it was also a vital part of his life. “It was cathartic,” he says. “I was always athletic, playing football and other sports, and I loved the physical aspect of fishing, the hard work, and the life out in Bristol Bay.”
Other fishermen found it kind of curious that Costello was an actor in the offseason. “But I would get a lot of screeners, DVDs of new movies, and I’d bring them with me, and we’d sometimes have movie nights on the boat,” he says. “Our radio group would raft up, and we’d put blankets over the windows and have buckets for seats, and everyone would watch the movies on the big screen, so it was okay having an actor around. They ended up calling me Hollywood.”
Costello had found his way onto Walter Kallenberg’s boat in 1985 and by the 90s he’d become part of the family. “At the end of the season I didn’t want to go straight back to Hollywood so I would go to Walter’s house in Homer and decompress for a week or two. I’d take the kids fishing around Homer.”
When he did get back to Hollywood, Costello found that the movie folks were also curious to have a fisherman in their midst. “I went to an audition for a show called Tribes,” he says. “My publicist had mentioned that I spent summers fishing for salmon in Alaska, and the casting people and director all started asking me about fishing. We spent the first 15 minutes with them asking me all about the life and the boats. By the time it came to the audition, we were all friendly and relaxed, and I got the part.”
After 38 years of summers fishing Bristol Bay, with a few years missed, Costello had to give it up. “I was always on deck, he says. “And it took its toll on me physically. But Walter’s son Arron hires me now as a consultant for Wild Alaska, and I am kind of the wagon master for the company’s summer retreat for employees, and I get to go fishing for fun out of Homer.” So Costello now uses his acting skills to entertain people in the fish business. “It’s kind of a Zen balance,” he says
To be clear, though, Costello is an actor who fishes, not a fisherman who acts. He lives now in Atlanta, Georgia, and works on Indy projects like his 2022 movie Charles Sloan, the story of a man released from prison with a terminal illness, trying to reclaim what he can of his life before it ends.
“That role fit me like an old jacket,” says Costello. “There were scenes where things happened that I didn’t expect; it wasn’t even acting at that point.” In a sense, Costello had become Charles Sloan, and as when he worked Bristol Bay, he had to take his time getting from one world to the other. “It took me a while to get out of that character,” he says. But like a fish, Costello stays fluid, continuing his work on the screen and in the salmon business.
