Tom Waters(VII)

Tom Waters "After 25 years of training horses, I've come back to my roots as an Actor, Writer and Producer and now Director". Tom was formerly associated with the Hidden Hills Playhouse and with Neon Art Productions in Los Angeles, where he produced and co-produced several stage plays including the financially successful and critically acclaimed Working by Studs Terkel presented at the world famous Mayfair Music Hall in Santa Monica, California. Tom met his screenwriting mentor Richard Matheson while performing at and serving on the board of directors of the Hidden Hills Players. In 2012, Tom stepped behind the camera and started El Gato Rojo Productions. EGR's first production was the documentary The Best Thing for the Inside of a Marine is the Outside of a Horse and the pilot episodes of the TV series Paranormal Experience which Tom created, produced, directed and hosted. Tom enjoyed a great career racing Motocross for Suzuki in the '70s with short forays into Sprint Cars and Formula 2 before embarking on a business career that included creating the first business model for video tape rental! Yes, he invented Blockbuster Video! Tom left the corporate world in 1980 and moved to LA where he began years of study in film and theatre technique with Peter Breck (The Big Valley) and David Michaels (Godspell). Tom studied Meisner, Strasberg, Adler and Stanislavski as well as Peter and David's practical methods. Tom studied Law and Film at USC. With David and Peter's coaching Tom began a successful run of stage appearances including Our Town, Working and Typist and the Tiger. Tom's critically acclaimed role as Danny in Night Must Fall came at the insistence of Jack Palance who convinced Tom to take on this great part. It was Jack that also encouraged Tom to write the remake of the film version of Night Must Fall. Growing tired of the Hollywood scene, Tom pursued his other passion (horses) in the Equestrian Olympic Sport of 3-Day Eventing. Riding horses took Tom around the world and kept him away from Hollywood for nearly 20 years. An avid cyclist, Tom competed for the USA in the 2009 UCI Mountain Bike Masters World Cross Country Championships in PraLoup, France. Once an Actor, always an Actor is something that the late AcademyAward winner Jack Palance often repeated to Tom and finally In 2011 Tom re-emerged as an actor, writer and producer after a 20 year hiatus from Hollywood! Armed with the screenplay Night Fall a remake of the MGM classic Night Must Fall , Tom hit the streets of Hollywood and New York City looking for producers to re-make the classic film. Amused that Hollywood still remembered him as "Bruce Dern's brother", Tom took the hint and remembering something that Jack Palance often repeated to Tom, "Once an Actor, always an Actor", he finally went back in front of the camera. Tom enjoyed a six year long development "deal" with Sony Crackle that expired with the sale of the network. He developed or co-developed several series and feature films at Crackle and those projects are being shopped elsewhere! Tom continues acting today with a steady stream of work in film and TV both in LA and NY. He was seen regularly on the ABC sitcom Schooled and in films like Wonderstruck, Cafe Society and on TV in Bunk'd, The Americans and Boardwalk Empire to name a few. In 2019 Tom took advantage of being thought of as Bruce Dern's brother and played a "Younger Jammer" to Bruce's "Jammer" on Don Cheadle's popular series Black Monday! In the "Look-a Like" department Tom is also Steven Spielberg's double and stand-in on the rare occasions that Steven appears in a film at Universal Studios. Tom and Steven share the same mentor in Richard Matheson. The short film Infinite Possibilities, written and Directed by Tom was a semi finalist during the Cannes Film Festival in 2019 and earned Tom a Best Directorial Debut award at Cinefest followed by ShortsTV picking up the film for broadcast on the network. In recent months Tom has had two feature screenplays optioned. A western and a Bigfoot themed dramatic thriller. Back in the theatre, Tom was a member of the cast of the Tony Award winning play The Lehman Trilogy! Along with his life partner Natalia Lazarus recently wrapped shooting of their film Remains of a Nation, due to hit the festival circuit this fall.