The story of Eriksen Dickens begins in Oakdale, California. The place is known as the Cowboy Capital of the World and is a rural community of around 20,000 people nestled deep within California’s Central Valley. The culture of this quaint town is such that since childhood people have the mindset of accepting blue-collar jobs like farming, construction, ranching, firefighting and other similar professions. Eriksen Dickens, being one of them, feels gratitude towards his community, for it’s here that he learnt hard work and importance of family. However, he wanted to do something outside the box.
When Eriksen turned 6, he began penning stories with some help from his grandma. His upbringing in California’s Central Valley where most of his time was spent in his grandfather’s peach orchards inspired his very first novel, The Orchard’s Offspring. Apart from writing, his hobbies involved making movies and playing baseball. He even received an athletic scholarship to Cal State Stanislaus in 2013. However, injuries put a setback on his sports career and this made him get back to his childhood passion of filmmaking. Eriksen Dickens, along with his younger brother, Soren Dickens, was very interested in making movies since a very young age. In the year 2015, while still in college, the brothers founded Platinum Peek Productions, their digital media agency. The company specializes in producing advertisements and documentaries for businesses and brands. The filmmaking career of Eriksen Dickens had just begun. While young, he used to make movies with his brother and friends with costumes, scripts– the whole nine yards. As the Dickens brothers grew up, they wished to make a movie in the honor of their hometown, Oakdale. Their debut film was a documentary entitled, OKG – Oakdale Kinda Guy, which highlighted the importance of the sports culture in their community. The film got released in 2016 and was a hit in the community, gaining around 25,000 views on YouTube within the first couple of days. In the same year, the brothers also produced a documentary honoring their father who passed away from brain cancer. The film was entitled, His Legacy: The Rise, Ride and Last Stand of the Oakdale Colts. The film premiered to over 300 people in Oakdale.
Later in the year 2017, Eriksen Dickens received his BA in Philosophy from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. In the year 2020, Eriksen Dickens laid a milestone in his career with the film, Two Magic Drops. It is a short documentary about Rotary International’s involvement providing polio vaccinations to the children in India. This 14-minute documentary has since been selected to 8 international film festivals and even won awards at 3 of them. It was around this time when Eriksen began to really lean into his passion for acting. He began with smaller budget music videos, commercials, and short films, but was quickly able to book a role in a feature film that is set to begin production in LA during the summer. He has also been taking acting lessons through Actor’s Edge, an LA-based acting school initiated by the acting mentor of Zac Efron. Eriksen Dickens has beautifully carved his way from the open pastures of Oakdale to the filmmaking industry.