Today we’d like to introduce you to Owen Williams.
Hi Owen, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I blame Robert Frost… “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” I proposed to my wife with this poem. It started with basketball, of course. Basketball. I remember my brother got me a basketball for my birthday when I was 5 years old, and our
family had just moved to a little Colorado ski town in the Rocky Mountains called Steamboat Springs. Standing on the wooden deck, our massive Russian Wolfhound/Great Dane dog, Corby, looking out at the large front yard we shared with the next-door neighbors, me with a basketball with the name “Magic” on it. My brother had his own ball, a blue and white one representing the colors of North Carolina, signed by all the players on their national championship team that year, but on that day, my birthday, I now had a magic basketball. And that basketball was happiness. Quite a feeling, happiness. A feeling I’ve chased my whole life. I played a bunch of basketball in that little ski town. So much so that I had scholarship offers from colleges. Ended up going to Saint Mary’s College of California and never played a formal game again. No, basketball was skin to shed, a step onto the next road. Free from an old identity, I was at college to explore. Experience. Engage. Engulf in massive amounts of rebellion. Which led me to an acting class. Our first assignment was to study a real-life moment and then replicate it in class. I didn’t do the assignment, so when it came my turn, I pretended to be a homeless man eating a cheeseburger. When I finished the performance, I looked up and found my teacher crying. And I felt it again. Happiness. I made someone feel something. That was meaningful. I did some plays at the school. I did “Trojan Women” with Oscar-winning actor Mahershala Ali. I played Talthybius. I became the first student in the history of Saint Mary’s College of California to receive an acting scholarship, because the director of the play wanted me to be the lead in Moliere’s “The Imaginary Invalid,” but I was a busboy at a local steakhouse to help pay for my rent. I told him I needed the money and couldn’t take time off. He went to the higher-ups of the college and got them to pay me the equivalent of what I’d make at the restaurant. It was given to me in the form of an acting scholarship. My first paid gig. And a realization. You can get paid to do things that make you happy. Like basketball. Or acting. Performance. Creativity. Joy. So, after graduating, I took the less traveled road to LA and started this pursuit. This endless pursuit. And it has made all the difference. Sometimes, I think the difference of an early death, but more often I think the difference of a rewarding, meaningful life.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I live in a little apartment on Laurel Canyon in Hollywood with my wife and two kids. My wife, Sherry Romito, who is a significant actress and director and partner both as a wife and collaborator, and I pull our Murphy bed out from the wall in our living room every night for bedtime because of RENT CONTROL! We’ve lived in our apartment for 20 years and have been together for 24 as of May 17, 2024. Now, we raise an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old here. We volunteer at their public school, and my brilliant wife started a composting and gardening program there that teaches public school kids gardening, cooking from the garden, and composting, all in the name of helping these city kids get a little taste of the value of nature and taking care of our planet. I love watching her do this. And I’m grateful to the road less taken for leading me to her. But man, there has been a lot of struggle, a lot of sacrifice. We have been on the brink, wondering if our fingernails have enough keratin in them to hang on. Booking one job in this town is a challenge, let alone raising kids in LA as actors. I mean, booking a gig? Booking a gig is like your favorite sports team winning their main event. Booking a gig in this town is barely possible. And to make a career at it? With kids? And when you don’t work? Doing math on how you’re going to survive, make money, pay for groceries, justify your life, your choices. Every day can be a struggle. Which is why, if you want to do this, you have to want to do it. You have to be committed. Some days are really hard. But mostly, we live a life curated around how we want to spend our time. Which is mainly with each other and our children. Where others have resources like a large bank account or expensive cars, we have the resource of time. It’s what makes your life interesting. What fills your well. Gives you purpose. And the motivation to keep going, to get through, and to expand a little, bit by bit, because if you’re committed, and you really mean it, you keep getting to experience the “why” of why you’re here. And that’s where real happiness lives.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
A poem…
I’m torn.
Torn between coming up with reasons for hope,
A survival strategy I’ve used throughout the years that’s gotten me this far,
Or giving up,
Something I have yet to try.
All my role models have tried it.
Some of them are still alive.
Some I wish would die.
Might make things easier.
But that’s not how it works.
The rabbit, with its throat cut, fights for a final breath.
We cling to our hollow shells
Somehow hoping the Bhagavad Gita itself will float up suddenly and reveal the unfolding from all time. And why shouldn’t we? We’ve made it this far.
I have been in lots and lots of commercials, written and directed my own projects, been on TV, starred in movies, and now I’m writing poems and teaching my children tennis. My goal this year is to publish a collection of my poems, continue to make money as an actor, and play as much tennis with my children as possible. All in the name of maximizing happiness.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up.
A favorite childhood memory is playing basketball with Brian Martinez in elementary school and learning the game from him, because he seemed to really know how to play. Anytime I had a basketball and a hoop, that was a good day, and I spent thousands of hours of my childhood on the blacktop or in the back yard, shooting on a makeshift hoop that my dad constructed with a piece of plywood, a railroad tie, and some piping. I remember sneaking out of my house at night to play under the moonlit courts at the high school. Once, on a summer midnight excursion, hooping against the legends of the game, my brother showed up looking for me. He was probably sent there by my mom, worried that I was out doing who knows what. We shot around a little bit and then walked the empty ski town streets home together in the cool night air. On our walk home, a herd of cattle came huffing down the main street, marching to some far off field, led by no one, a long line of cows just taking a nighttime stroll on their own. We watched in amazement, listening to their silent parade, their hooves crunching, their snorts wisps of small clouds vanishing in the air, a secret the people of Steamboat weren’t suppose to know about, but that, by the grace of basketball, we were witnesses to. The cows disappeared down the road and we went home, knowing something magical had just happened, but not quite sure the meaning of it. I hope one day, it all makes sense.
Pricing:
- Private Tennis Coaching $359.00/Hour
- Acting SAG standard rate
Contact Info:
- Website: www.nowadays.pictures
- Instagram: sherryromito
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/owen.williams.35325074
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nowadayspictures6084/featured
