Teacher follows her dream of being on the Silver Screen
By Kirsten Ballard
Published in News on April 5, 2015 1:50 AM
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Ashley Bratcher appears in a film scene. The former Eastern Wayne Middle School teacher has realized her dream of becoming an actress.
kballard@newsargus.com
Ashley Bratcher told her students to follow their dreams.
The art teacher at Eastern Wayne Middle School explained that if they tried really hard, they could make a living pursuing the arts.
"If you have a dream, you can make it a reality," she said.
It made her pause.
"I had to ask myself, 'Are you doing what you're meant to do?'"
Ashley is a storyteller.
"I'm passionate about making people feel something," she said.
While a student at Eastern Wayne High School, she played Snow White, but that was the extent of her acting career.
However, she fell in love with acting and film.
After graduating from Campbell University, she went to New York to experiment and try to make it in the big city.
"Being a Southern girl at heart, I hated it," she laughed.
So she moved back home to teach art at the middle school where she first learned to create.
"I was passionate about teaching kids," she said. While at the middle school, she started a drama club.
But after a few years of teaching, she began to feel the pull of the silver screen again.
In 2012, Ashley described the film industry in Wilmington as booming. She began picking up extra work for different films.
"I got hooked," she said.
She and her husband decided if she could make a go of it and stay in North Carolina, she should go for it.
They moved to Surf City, and Ashley began working in broadcast journalism while networking in the independent film community.
In 2013, she got her big break in "Princess Cut," a romantic Christian drama, filmed entirely in North Carolina.
The film won runner-up for best feature and audience choice at the Christian Worldview Film Festival in San Antonio, Texas.
While she says she never meant to become a Christian actress, that is the direction most of her work has taken.
This fall, she will grace the big screen in "90 Minutes in Heaven," where she plays Kate Bosworth's best friend. The movie is based on the novel by Don Piper about a man who was in a terrible accident and declared dead for 90 minutes.
Additionally, she plays the role of Lindsay in the Kendrick Brother's film "War Room," in theaters Aug. 28.
"It feels so rewarding, to see the fruit of work come out" she said.
She keeps in touch with her former art students.
"It proves they can really do it," she said.