PHOTO BY JEFF RAESE
By Alec Harvey
H
ad it not been for a speech that Michael O’Neill gave to his “I had just finished my last final and was well into a keg of beer,” fraternity, he probably wouldn’t have been an actor. O’Neill says with a chuckle. “He had heard the address. He said, He wouldn’t have been Special Agent Ron Butterfield on ‘Son, I think you should try acting before the corporate structure “The West Wing.” Or Sen. Mitchell Chapin in “Tom Clancy’s Jack snaps you up.’ I’ll never forget that. I got in my car two weeks later Ryan.” Or the mass shooter Gary Clark, and drove to Hollywood.” perhaps the most memorable guest charWorking with Geer and his daughter, acter ever on “Grey’s Anatomy.” Not to Ellen, at their Theatricum Botanicum, mention all the roles he’s played in movies he’d soon learn that Geer didn’t single him such as “Seabiscuit,” “Transformers” and out – “I must have heard him say the exact “Dallas Buyers Club.” same thing 100 times to other people,” he But after O’Neill, who was about to says – but it didn’t matter. His trajectory graduate from Auburn University with a was set, and it was going to be played out degree in finance, delivered an address to on stage and screen. a national Lambda Chi Alpha gathering in O’Neill toiled away for years, first in Los Muncie, Indiana, he got a call from a fel- O’Neill plays Chaplain Kendricks in the critically Angeles and then in New York, where he low fraternity member – Will Geer, who acclaimed feature film, “Clemency,” which won studied at the famed Neighborhood Playwas one of TV’s biggest stars at the time, the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. It house, worked off- and off-off-Broadway starring as Grandpa on “The Waltons.” and “did whatever I needed to keep body opened in theaters Dec 27. PHOTO COURTESY OF NEON
12 JANUARY 2020
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