Steve Dudley co-wrote, co-directed, produced and starred in “All Hail Anastasia,” a thriller/drama film to be released on Amazon Prime, Apple TV and Tubi on June 20.

The filmmaking effort promises success in the world of entertainment. It’s also a world away from the 18-year-old who arrived from England to play soccer at Stetson.

In fast rewind: After an ACL injury ended his playing career, Dudley’s attention turned to a career in physical therapy. He majored in Integrated Health Sciences, graduated in 2010 and moved to Colorado with a dream of working with the U.S. Olympic Team. Instead, he launched a successful business teaching nutrition, physical therapy and personal training, remaining in Colorado for 12 years.

Then one of his clients asked if Dudley could share that same information to his employees. The inquiry prompted Dudley to start a new health and wellness company for corporations.

“I had 12 offices at my peak,” Dudley described. “Around age 30, I got burned out by the 4 a.m. wake-up calls I’d been doing for most of my career, and closed my company after I sold its data to a major health care company. COVID had just hit, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.”

Becoming a Filmmaker

Following a script uniquely his own, Dudley found filmmaking.

One day his mother, a former actress on the West End in England, blurted out a suggestion. “I always thought you’d be an actor,” she said. “I think you’d enjoy it.”

Dudley took acting classes in Atlanta and ultimately fell in love with writing.

Fast forward to today: “All Hail Anastasia” is a story about the “Black woman’s plight” — unraveling the death of Anastasia and how the people who were supposed to love her the most failed her by behaving because of, or for, Anastasia. In the end, the film is an “age-old tale of the things we do for love in the state of grief, with a modern twist.”

“This industry is hard to break into, so I wanted to self-produce a film and do it myself,” Dudley said. “I decided to learn as I go, rather than attending film school. It’s been an adventure, but I’ve learned so much. Half of the film was shot on my property [in Georgia], with minimal cast and minimal crew.”

Dudley is married to the former Sarah Riopelle, also a 2010 graduate of Stetson. The couple has two daughters, Sophie, 6, and Sienna, 3, who inspired their father to write the movie’s plot.

“The scariest thing I could think of was losing one of my girls,” Dudley explained. “That generated the idea for the script. Losing a daughter is a terrifying thought — it’s gripping. As the theme of my first film, which we made for $150,000, well, I think we did a wonderful job.”