‘Santa Claus... is your own personality shining through. You make the show.’

Center stage is not where Guy Rochefort aspired to be while growing up in Rhode Island. But now the Encinitas resident finds himself there most weekends. The 30-year-old Rochefort has portrayed everything from Santa Claus at a local mall to cartoon characters at children’s birthday parties as a part of his business, Animated Characters Inc. He has lost his beard and cap while playing Santa on an ice skating rink for a company Christmas party, but he proudly boasts that no child has ever “wet” in his lap. Rochefort came to San Diego nearly seven years ago to find a job in medical research, and worked for a time at two area convalescent homes. He eventually abandoned the field of medical care for lack of available jobs as well as his own independence. Inspired by an old friend from Rhode Island who was making “oodles” of money doing party entertainment there, Rochefort decided to start a similar business here. During the peak seasons, summer and the holidays, he manages 30 to 40 people, including clowns, mimes, magicians, musicians and “technical advisers” who help in planning parties. He was interviewed by Times staff writer Kathie Bozanich at his home and Times staff photographer Don Bartletti photographed him there. It’s a good stress release for me to do the characters. It doesn’t really matter what character to do, though I do like doing Santa Claus the best.

Santa is a lot of fun because you can actually interact with the people more than other characters. Most characters have full-head costumes and you just play the part of the character. Santa Claus . . . is your own personality shining through. You make the show. And I think it’s lots of fun dealing with the children face to face.

In all the years I’ve done Santa Claus I’ve never had problems with the children. Because of my experience doing all the characters I think I have a lot more control than most of the Santa Clauses you see.

I’ve done it for five years now, and I’ve never had a kid come up and be totally unruly to the point that I couldn’t control him. I’ve never had a situation like my beard coming off and the kid saying, “Ah-ha, you’re not Santa Claus.”

I’ve gone back to the convalescent homes I worked at in my costumes, and the people there love it. Working with older adults is a lot like working with the children. It’s the cycle of life. A lot of people in the convalescent homes were to the point that they need to be cared for like a child all over again.

Working at the homes just got to be too much, though. Free-lancing, setting my own hours and such was more up my alley. It was basically a survival tactic at first, but now it’s become my career, and for a while there, my obsession.

To start it up, I borrowed my brother’s car and his Visa card and I went out and bought the materials to make costumes. I made up flyers and started going out to preschools and party shops, and I had these grandiose ideas. It just snowballed from there.

A lot of the people who work for me are aspiring actors and actresses. I myself had a role once in a Shakespeare play in high school but I didn’t really get into theater.

My wife and I don’t have really extravagant parties for our own three kids. We’ve had a magician once or twice, but it isn’t like I can dress up as a character or anything because my kids’ friends would recognize me.

I didn’t have birthday parties with entertainment and all that when I was growing up, mainly because I was one of six children and birthdays were kind of no big deal. Now, I think people first of all have (fewer) children, and secondly, young couples can afford parties like this a lot more than they used to be able to because most have double incomes.

I think it’s a really trendy thing now. Parents with young children are almost expected to have entertainment at their kids’ birthday parties.