A Lone Wolf Turned TV Actor

"When I first got to Stanford University," says Wolfe Perry, the talented and handsome 25-year-old black actor of Up and Coming and The White Shadow fame, "I had no idea what career I would take. So I took general studies and just took a bunch of classes and was hoping that one would strike my fancy. Fortunately, drama did."

Wolfe came to Stanford in 1975 by courtesy of a four-year basketball scholarship but the future actor became disenchanted with the sport. "I was miserable the whole time," says the former star of the Stanford Cardinals in a telephone interview from his father's house in Oakland, California, "because I think I'm too selfish a person to play basketball. I was ready to quit when I was at Stanford because I had found something else to turn onto and that was drama. I was forced to play basketball in order to keep the scholarship. I liked basketball but I didn't like to play it every day. I had a lot of trouble with teammates. I felt that the best person should shoot the ball and I always thought I was the best person."

Wolfe now regards his choice of basketball as a career goal as "another dumb choice I made in my life." (In 1979 he had been drafted by the Utah Jazz and while in their training camp, he had decided to drop out in order to pursue an acting career.) "It [basketball] was at one time fun but the higher up you go, the fun diminishes. It just wrecks your body," explains Perry.

As it turned out, the National Basketball Association's loss became--with some disappointment to his family--television's gain. "I'm sure they would much prefer to see me as a professional athlete but I'm the one who has to wrap the bandages and set the ice packs," says the six-foot-two, 170-pound actor.

During his "four rather studious years" (when he wasn't on the basketball court), Wolfe appeared in some 25 campus productions. The plays ranged from Shakespeare to Arthur Miller. Does he plan to pursue further dramatic training? "I think I [have] enough knowledge," says Perry, "to put some of it to work." (He has a B.A. in drama.)

His dramatic knowledge must have been quite impressive because when he auditioned at Stanford for the part of Kevin Wilson, the 17-year-old high school basketball star in Up and Coming, the casting director hired him on the spot. What's more, Wolfe was the last one to be auditioned that day. (Up and Coming is a half-hour public television dramatic series about Frank and Joyce Wilson and their three children who through hard work and sacrifice move from a low-income black neighborhood to a middle-class, integrated one in San Francisco. The show, which premiered in the fall of 1980, lasted only two seasons.)

When Up and Coming was on hiatus, Wolfe went to Los Angeles in search of an agent. When he found one, he was sent that same day to a White Shadow audition. He landed the part of Teddy Rutherford, a scholar-athlete from a black middle class family who decide to send him to a ghetto school in South-Central Los Angeles to raise his black consciousness. Wolfe considers his work on The White Shadow to be "a pretty good learning experience in that I got to work with some really professional people on their level and also learned how to work very, very fast because that's what's necessary in television production."

To some degree, Wolfe Perry is similar to the Rutherford character. He has always been a straight A student and he has "always been intrigued and fascinated by the whole schooling process."

Perry, like Rutherford, loves to read. His reading consists of biographies and love stories. His other leisure time activities are watching old movies on television ( Humphrey Bogart is his favorite actor), playing dominoes, and going to the racetrack.

Wolfe is such a loner that if you try to get him to go out and do a bit of socializing, you've got a major task on your hands. "I hate going out," he says. "I go out to try to socialize and end up having a horrible time. Usually, I go out with one of my buddies. I just camp out at a table somewhere and try to get as drunk as possible. My life is almost a disaster socially. Most of my spare time I spend either looking at television or dreaming about girls. And that's about it [he laughs]. That's the excitement. That's the flavoring in my life."

His shy, quiet manner causes people to ask him if he's OK. "I've always been like that. Off to myself and not bothering anyone. That's why it's kind of strange to have [fans] approach me because I'm not use to that type thing at all." (A recent fan magazine article in which he spoke of being lonely brought 15,000 letters from adoring female readers.)

Wolfe is presently seeking financial backing for a production company he wants to start. It's not that he's tired of acting--"I plan to continue acting with the projects that I produce"--it's just that he is "dissatisfied with the way things are done in L. A." TV and movies, says Wolfe, "are wasting a lot of money with bad scripts, bad projects. So I want to do something with some quality. Something good." He has already written two feature film scripts. "I've talked to some people who know what writing is, whose opinion I respect highly and they said, 'very good'."

"My desire," says Wolfe, "is to get as much work as possible as an actor. I'm really in love with the whole art of it. I'd like to get as much experience as possible." If Wolfe's past efforts are any indication, it's a sure bet we'll be hearing as well as seeing much more of this talented and ambitious young actor.

This article was originally published in the New York Amsterdam News (January 15, 1983).