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The Official Web Site of the WVU Varsity Club |
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Profile: Ben Reed
West Virginia University football fans may remember Reed as the quarterback sandwiched between Jeff Hostetler, Kevin White and Major Harris. Reed and teammate Mike Timko split playing time during the 1986 season while Harris was getting ready to take over the starting job a year later in 1987. A handsome, 6-foot-4, 210-pound, Bixby, Okla., native, Reed played a total of seven games for the Mountaineers in ‘86, starting three. He passed for 580 yards and two touchdowns while throwing four interceptions. Reed came to West Virginia by way of Northeast Oklahoma Junior College, where he passed for 1,405 yards and 15 touchdowns as a sophomore. With White leaving after the 1984 Bluebonnet Bowl game and just few capable quarterbacks in the program, Mountaineer coach Don Nehlen decided to go to the junior college ranks to find another quarterback. What Nehlen ended up with was Reed. "I remember getting off the plane in Morgantown and being picked up by (offensive linemen) Brian Jozwiak and Jack Keslar," Reed recalled. "They said we’re your offensive line and I asked them if the rest of the line were like them. They had their Mohawk haircuts and it was just insane. I’m walking off the plane, Jozwiak’s one of my offensive linemen, and I’m thinking I’m never going to get touched." Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way. As a senior in 1987, Reed completed as many passes (three) as he had concussions. "I was in the training room more than I was in class," he laughed. Although Ben Reed’s career didn’t turn out the way he planned it when he arrived in the fall of 1985, he still enjoyed his three years in Morgantown. "West Virginia University is a great place and I loved every minute of it," he says. Even though football was his primary focus at WVU, Reed was always interested in acting. He toyed with the idea of taking up theater in high school but decided against it when his football career began to blossom. However, when it became apparent after a couple of years of college football that his playing career wasn’t going to go any farther, the acting bug returned. "Football was a full-time job, they were paying for my scholarship, so that’s where I put all of my attention," he said. "When I left school I knew (acting) was what I was going to do." Reed’s interest peaked during a spring break trip to Florida in 1988. He noticed an advertisement in the Miami Herald about auditions for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He ripped out the ad and discreetly put it in his suitcase. When he returned to West Virginia he called up the Academy and arranged for an audition in Washington, D.C. "I drove over to D.C. and told everyone that I was staying with a buddy over there and went to the audition and got accepted," he said. "My choice was either New York or Los Angeles. I just thought New York would be too much for me so I went out to Los Angeles and got an apartment on July 4, 1988. "It was a six-week program at the American Academy and I just loved it," he continued. "I loved the performing aspect of it, I loved creating characters and I finished with the lead role in the play Death of a Salesman and really enjoyed it." Reed was asked to stay for the Academy’s two-year program but he had just finished college at WVU and he didn’t want to spend two more years going to school. He was anxious to begin working and asked an instructor at the Academy to hook him up with an acting coach in LA. "She said ‘Ben you’re going to work -- you’ve just got to get there to do it,’" he remembered. The acting coach Reed was set up with turned out to be a nightmare: "He was brutal. He would cuss people out and I just stood up during one of the classes and told him that this was not the way to treat people and walked out," Reed said. "Unfortunately, I had paid for the next month and I wasn’t exactly rich at the time." A better experience with acting coach Howard Fine led to a relationship with a commercial agency. By 1990, Reed was working in television sitcoms. He was the male nurse in the famous Seinfeld episode "The Outing." He made guest appearances in Northern Exposure, Silk Stalkings, Renegade, Murder, She Wrote, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Suddenly Susan, Will & Grace and the X Files. Reed had small parts in prominent movies, too, including the role of the doomed pilot in the John Travolta/Nicholas Cage film Face/Off in 1997. "When I was working on Face/Off I hung out a little with Travolta. We actually passed football on the tarmac before my scenes in the movie." Reed played Slick in the low budget thriller "Molly & Gina" in 1994 that also featured Peter Fonda and Elizabeth Berkley. "I was blessed to be able to get work as early as I did," he said. "I’ve done a lot of guest stars and I’ve also done a lot of movies that went straight to video that are just pieces of crap," he laughed. Reed won’t single out his worst project, but admits that "Scanner Cop" (1994) won’t be going in his VCR anytime soon. "There were always reasons I’ve done stuff," he said. "Maybe at the time I was young and waiting tables and I needed work. There was no nudity in "Scanner Cop" but it was just a bad script." Like all aspiring actors, Reed has a large laundry list of parts he didn’t get. Among those were Matthew Perry’s character Chandler Bing in Friends. He also read for one of the doctor roles in ER. "Actors have a million stories like that," Reed said. Since January he’s read for eight different pilots. "I got close on a couple but I didn’t get them," he said. "There’s two different pilot seasons during the year and right now everybody is on hiatus. There’s nothing going on." You can see Reed as the character "Dirk" in a commercial for Uncle Ben’s Rice. He has also done commercials for Lamisil AT and Internet mortgage companies. Not only does Reed get paid for doing the commercial, but he also gets residual income every time it airs. "An actor makes money when a commercial plays on TV and he gets his residuals," Reed explained. "The thing you want to do is get about six or seven of those spots going and then you don’t have to stress out about where your next paycheck is coming from." Right now Reed has his agent looking for movie projects in Los Angeles. However, his ideal job would be on a television series. "I would love to land a role on a sitcom. It’s a nine-to-five job. That’s when you can hang out with your kids, live a normal life, go coach baseball and do things with your family." Ben just turned 37 in May and his career is now moving from young, leading man roles toward more fatherly, attorney-type parts. "A few years back they went for the young guys in their twenties and I had a tough time getting those roles. My agent was like ‘don’t worry about it, these things go in cycles.’" Another handicap is Reed’s size. Six-four is great for college quarterbacks, but it doesn’t work in Hollywood when being paired with leading females standing 5-foot-5 and 5-foot-6. "I was up for some soaps and I just didn’t match up with the girl because I was too short," he said. "In Hollywood terms I’m too tall. I need to be Tom Cruise size. "I’ve lost parts because my hair was brown and I didn’t want to go through the trouble of making my hair blond, just crazy stuff," he added. "I’d call my agent and ask ‘what happened?’ He’d say ‘they loved you but they’re going in a different direction. You were too big for the part because there’s no way her brother would have been that size because of the genes from her parents’ -- stuff that you’re like what can I do?" Reed has used his athletic background to help him get more physical roles that less athletic actors have more difficulty performing. Another more important benefit of his athletic background is that it has helped him handle the disappointment of losing roles. "There’s a lot of rejection and some people have a tough time handling that. It can be very personal," he says. He now lives in San Diego with his growing family of three children and wife of five years, Kim. He also has two children with country music recording artist Tanya Tucker. Reed makes it a point to visit his two children at least twice a month in Nashville. He was mentioned prominently in Tucker’s 1997 autobiography, Nickel Dreams, My Life. "What can you do about it?" he says. "Other than my two beautiful children, I’ve moved on from that part of my life. "I’ve come to a point where I make a good living. I get to coach baseball and football. My wife doesn’t have to work. If you think about your career too much then you stop living life," he says. "I just like family, I like kids – that’s what it’s all about for me." Just the day before interviewing for this story, he played in a charity golf tournament at Torrey Pines where his team shot a seven-under 65. "The team that won the tournament shot 18 under," he said. "They were either really good or great cheaters. I’m not sure which." Playing Torrey Pines on a Thursday afternoon? Yeah, you could say things are looking pretty good for Ben Reed. |
Life
couldn’t be any better these days for Ben Reed. |
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