He’s Hot as a Heavy : Former WFL Player Ballew Makes a Good Living by Portraying Bad Guys

Chances are you have seen Mike Ballew before. He was probably beating up some guy, sacking a quarterback, falling out a second-story window, getting shot at or pulling out someone’s teeth.

It’s all in a day’s work for an actor-stuntman, one who enjoys every second of playing the big, bad thug who people love to hate.

And just how mean are his roles?

Consider his part in the 1988 B-flick “Jack Kelly Snakeater,” in which he appeared with longtime pal Lorenzo Lamas.

Ballew was a motorcycle gang member named “The Dentist,” one who didn’t believe in using Novocain on his victims.

“ ‘The Dentist’ beat people up and pulled their teeth out with pliers,” Ballew said.

Ballew’s mean streak can be traced to his days as a defensive end with the Southern California Sun of the now-defunct World Football League, and his brief stops with the Rams and Chicago Bears.

His pro football career led him to the film industry, where he has landed acting and stunt roles in eight movies. He also performs a variety of behind-the-scenes jobs.

His roles have ranged from security guards to football players to three versatile parts in the recently released “Suburban Commando”:

--A stunt double for pro wrestlers Hulk Hogan and Mark Calloway, better known as “The Undertaker.”

--Hogan’s nasty neighbor, who, in the movie’s only successful joke, threatens to end a dispute with the Hulkster not with his fists, but with lawyers (“This is the ‘90s, we’re gonna sue . . . You’ll be hearing from our lawyers.”)

--A spaceman/security guard who gets pummeled by the Hulkster in the opening scene.

“I love the fight scenes,” Ballew said. “Hell, I fought all the time back when I was in college. Now I make money doing it.”

Ballew, 43, admits he looks every bit the bad-guy character, with his Popeye chest and arms, furrowed brow and piercing eyes.

“It’s easy to act mean,” said Ballew, who’s 6 feet 5 and weighs 255 pounds. “I’m always the biker, the goon, the bad guy.

“But I’m the guy who’s always going to get beat up. That won’t change unless I’m going to be a leading man.”

But away from the movie set, at his home in Sunset Beach, Ballew sheds the bad-guy image to unveil a softer side.

He tells of growing up in the Cascade Mountains in Washington, raising horses. He admitted he cried when his pro football career ended in 1976.

“I’m really not as mean as I act,” Ballew said, laughing.

His co-workers agree. Howard Rutman, an aspiring script writer, worked with Ballew’s transportation crew on the set of “The Case of Dr. Willis,” a CBS movie starring Jaclyn Smith that finished production in early October.

“You look at Mike and you see this big, mean-looking guy,” Rutman said. “He scares you. But he has a kind, soft side, and he’s great to work for.

“He runs the transportation crew like a team, everyone has a specific assignment that’s expected to be carried out. A lot of that comes from his experience in football.”

In fact, it was Tom Fears, the former Ram wide receiver and Sun coach, who gave Ballew his first break in the movie industry.

Fears worked as a technical adviser on football movies such as “Semi-Tough,” “Heaven Can Wait” and “North Dallas Forty” in the mid-1970s.

When the movie needed extras for the football scenes, Fears brought along Ballew and other Sun players.

The extras were hardly treated like stars. Ballew paid his own way to Dallas for “Semi-Tough,” and he and the other players slept on cots in the Cotton Bowl locker room. They were paid $250 a day.

“We had a lot of fun down there, though,” Ballew said. “We were set. We had showers, hot tubs, everything right there for us. It was a party.”

Back then, movies were little more than a hobby for Ballew.

His livelihood was football, a sport he didn’t play until he was a high school freshman.

Ballew grew up outside Leavenworth, Wash., a small town about an hour’s drive east of Seattle. He attended school in a one-room school house until the eighth grade. His father was a truck driver and his mother ran the local lodge they owned.

Outside of playing tag and training horses, Ballew had little interest in sports until he reached high school. His size and 4.7-second speed in the 40 earned him a partial football scholarship to Shoreline Community College in Seattle.

He transferred to the University of Washington after junior college, giving up football so he could finish his sociology degree.

After college, a tryout with the Hagerstown (Md.) Bears, a minor league team affiliated with the Washington Redskins, rekindled Ballew’s interest in football. He played for the Bears two seasons before landing with the real Bears--the ones in Chicago--as a free agent in 1972.

Ballew played half a season with Chicago, and moved to Newport Beach after he was cut. He sat out the 1973 season until the Sun signed him the next year, and he hasn’t left Orange County since.

“I’ve found my niche,” he said.

Ballew played two seasons with the Sun, and his football career ended in 1976, when he was cut in training camp by the Rams.

“Chuck Knox retired me before the regular season started,” Ballew said. “I cried all the way home. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

Ballew found work through his friendship with Lamas, who he met at the Long Beach Grand Prix. Lamas named Ballew manager of his auto racing team.

They raced GTO class cars until 1989, when Lamas shut down the team after getting married.

Lamas and Ballew have remained friends, and Ballew sometimes works for Lamas’ film company.

“Lorenzo has been like a brother to me,” Ballew said. “He got me started in the movies, gave me something to do after football.”

Besides acting and stunts, Ballew also has worked as a transportation captain on several films. His transportation captain duties--purchasing automobiles used on a set--have helped him find a few acting jobs.

“I’ll read the script before we start production to see what cars we need to buy for the movie,” Ballew said. “I always keep an eye out for small parts, ones that might need a tough.”

Working consistently the past two years, Ballew says he is happy with the path his career is taking.

He has recently hired an agent, finished transportation work on two movies and has lined up stunt work in Hawaii next month on Brian Bosworth’s next action-adventure movie. Ballew, who’s pretty handy with a jet ski, hopes he can put that skill to work in the movie.

Ballew is an active member of the Screen Actors Guild, but he’s still an independent stuntman. As an independent, he seeks work on his own rather than through associations such as Stunts Unlimited and the International Stuntmen’s Assn.

To join the associations, stuntmen need references from five stunt coordinators. Ballew has four.

“I’m getting there,” he said. “There aren’t many parts for a guy my size, but there’s not many guys my size who want to do what I do.”

Ballew’s resume lists several stunt “skills,” including expert horsemanship, motorcycle riding, fight stunts, free falls and experience on the “air ram,” a pressurized platform that launches a stuntman into the air during explosion scenes.

The stunts pay anywhere from $500 to $5,000 each, depending on difficulty, skill and danger.

All of Ballew’s training has come on movie sets. Although he once considered stuntman schools, Ballew said the hands-on experience is more beneficial.

“It all comes from being coachable,” he said. “You have to be able to go to the stunt coordinator and ask, ‘Am I doing this right? Should I do it different?’

“And you know you’ve done a good job on a stunt when the cast and crew applaud after you pull it off.” One of Ballew’s best stunts--a two-story free-fall in “Suburban Commando”--wound up on the editing-room floor.

Ballew said the free-fall was one of the toughest stunts he has done. The scene called for him to get shot in the back, then fall out of a second-story window and crash through some mesh wood that was painted to look like concrete, then land on a foam bag below.

“I didn’t have any fear until they said, ‘Action,’ ” Ballew said. “Then it was all slow motion.

“I don’t really consider what I did dangerous. But hell, I could’ve missed and really hit the concrete.”

Life in the independent film-making business is demanding. Ballew’s days often start as early as 4:30 a.m. and end well after dark.

Precision is a must. One slip can blow a scene, delay filming and drive a director into a frenzy. Or, even worse, a blown stunt can mean a trip to the emergency room, something Ballew, fortunately, has avoided.

“You have to be a little nervous when you do stunts,” he said. “It’s your only form of protection.”

With some luck, Ballew hopes the stunt work and small roles will lead to some bigger parts.

“I think I can make a living doing bad guys,” he said. “I think I finally found a niche in life. This is where I was supposed to be.”

His ultimate role? A chance to show off his horsemanship.

“I would give my right arm to do a Western,” Ballew said. “I grew up watching all the John Wayne westerns.

“Of course, if I’m in one, I’ll have to play the bad guy.”