Michael Ballew Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Michael Ballew
Acting
Biography
Michael Ballew was an American actor, stuntman and transportation coordinator. He began playing football as a high school freshman after his family moved to Leavenworth, Washington, and he received a partial football scholarship to Shoreline Community College in Seattle. After junior college, he transferred to the University of Washington to study sociology. After college, he played as a defensive end for the Hagerstown Bears, a minor league team in Maryland, for two seasons. He was signed to the Chicago Bears in 1973, and played half a season with the team before being cut. He moved to Newport Beach and was signed to the Southern California Sun of the now-defunct World Football League in 1974. His football career ended in 1976, when the Los Angeles Rams cut him during training camp. Southern California Sun coach Tom Fears, who worked as a technical adviser on football movies, gave Ballew his first break in the movie industry. He also found work through his friend Lorenzo Lamas, and was manager of his GTO class automobile racing team until 1989. He died on October 22, 2023 after a battle with progressive supranuclear palsy.
Filmography Movies
Acting
North Dallas Forty
A semi-fictional account of life as a professional football player. Loosely based on the Dallas Cowboys team of the early 1970s.
Midnight Man
When the police start a crackdown on Yakuza activities, a killer starts killing the cops forcing a martial-arts officer to fight back.
Mask of Death
While attempting to flee from the FBI, the criminal Frank Dallio kills Detective McKenna's wife, Rachel. McKenna himself is shot in the face by the professional killer Lyle Mason, who dies in a car crash shortly thereafter. The FBI persuades McKenna to undergo facial surgery and take the place of Lyle Mason in order to find Dallio and a valuable microchip.
Loving Deadly
A guy is smuggling babies across the border, and he gets busted. When he's in jail, his crime boss wants to keep him happy, so they arrange conjugal visits with a hooker, and they fall in love, then plot to get back at the crime boss, and they accidentally kill the crime boss's identical twin brother.
Snake Eater
The Snake Eaters are an elite division of the Marines especially trained for search and destroy missions. This actioner chronicles the exploits of one of them who has become a cop. Known as a tough loner, he returns to find the band of backwoods bad-guys who killed his parents and abducted his sister.
Suburban Commando
Shep Ramsey is an interstellar hero, righting wrongs, etc. His ship is damaged after a fight with an interstellar nasty and he must hide out on Earth until it can recharge. He leaves his power suit at home, but still finds himself unable to allow wrongs to go unrighted and so mixes it up with bad drivers, offensive paperboys, muggers and the like.
Ulterior Motives
A private eye becomes the bodyguard of a beautiful reporter being pursued by a Japanese mob.
Production
Damned If You Do
Alfie is the brother no one notices, and at his hot-shot brother Richard's wedding, Alfie's father insults him, his brother puts him down, he gets fired, and he falls off a second-story ledge to his death. He's in line to enter Heaven, when the Devil recruits him. The deal: go back to Earth, break all Ten Commandments in an hour, and get to join the big, eternal party in Hell. Alfie returns to the wedding, his list of Commandments in hand, and proceeds to have the time of his life. But what does the Devil have in store for him at hour's end? Is Satan trustworthy?
Donnie Darko
After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.
Breakin' All the Rules
After being dumped by his model girlfriend, aspiring writer Quincy Watson quits his job and is inspired to pen the ultimate how-to book on breaking up. When it becomes a smash bestseller, he starts giving his player cousin, Evan, choice tips on how to win the battle of the sexes. But when Evan's beautiful girlfriend Nikki gets wind of the plan, it's these players that end up getting played.
Suburban Commando
Shep Ramsey is an interstellar hero, righting wrongs, etc. His ship is damaged after a fight with an interstellar nasty and he must hide out on Earth until it can recharge. He leaves his power suit at home, but still finds himself unable to allow wrongs to go unrighted and so mixes it up with bad drivers, offensive paperboys, muggers and the like.
Suburban Commando
Shep Ramsey is an interstellar hero, righting wrongs, etc. His ship is damaged after a fight with an interstellar nasty and he must hide out on Earth until it can recharge. He leaves his power suit at home, but still finds himself unable to allow wrongs to go unrighted and so mixes it up with bad drivers, offensive paperboys, muggers and the like.