[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: How did stunt work save your life?
Sammy Horowitz, Action-Actor, Stuntman, Playwright, and Screenwriter: Prior to stunts I was a professional boxer, that’s what I did for a living. I supplemented my income by bouncing at bars and clubs and whatnot in Chicago. I say it saved my life because I had a best case scenario at the time, for me at least, from what I thought maybe I could work myself up to a big payday in boxing. I was going to just try to fight to the top to get a name fighter that I could possibly get a big purse. That never happened. I wasn’t a good enough boxer at all but that was what my dream was. Maybe I could just sell enough tickets and get a fan base and fight to the top and then retire with some money and open up a business. I wanted to do a franchise, maybe a restaurant, something like that.
That was the best case scenario for me. I didn’t really…I don’t have any skills. I got a GED in County Jail that I cheated on. I went to a couple classes in prison, which have served me actually like computer technology where I learned to type and whatnot, but I didn’t have an academic background and so I didn’t know what I could do.
Not to mention the fact that boxing kept me very strict with how I ate and not smoking, so many benefits that happen because of boxing but I was a fighter.
My promoter was consulting on a television show in Chicago. This was in 2013 and the show was called Mind Games with Christian Slater and Steve Zahn. It was one season and so they were doing an episode, I think episode 8, I can’t remember, where the guest star in the storyline of the episode was an aging boxer does something.
My promoter Bobby Hitz calls me up (he’s a big tough guy). He goes, Sammy, hey listen, you want to go down to PR casting on Heron and do an audition for me? You might be able to get a part.
I genuinely did not know what that even meant. I didn’t know what an audition was. I had no idea what he was talking about.
I go What are you talking about? He says…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Sammy Horowitz is an award winning action-actor, stuntman, playwright, and screenwriter from Chicago. Before moving to Hollywood, Sammy was a member of a predominantly Latino street gang and spent almost a decade in prison. He then went on to be a bouncer and doorman at nightclubs, a stick up man, a drug addict, an M.M.A. fighter, and eventually a full-time professional boxer who fought all over the country. Sammy is one of the only known stuntmen who has went on to write on television. His play, Musket and the Rat premiered in January 2020. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actor Sari Sanchez.
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