This Actor Often Plays a Bad Guy. He Wants to be a God Guy.

Scott William Winters navigates Hollywood as a Christian.

Wells $treet is always about the money, and this column is no different. We’re going to talk about the movie business today, but as we head into Passover and Easter, we’re taking a spiritual detour. (Though there’s a special Easter egg at the end about whether Jesus was well off.)

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Kids, we’re goin’ to Hollywood!

I’m attending my first Passover Seder this week at the home of some in-laws. I’m excited to finally celebrate a ritual that is thousands of years old. Plus, I hear there’s tons of food.

Then, this weekend, I wait expectantly for Easter.

As some of you may know, I’m a Christian, and like nearly all Christians, I suck at it. Would Jesus write a column called “Dumb & Dumber”? No. Though he did call out people who were acting all self-righteous and tell them to knock it off. Still, he wasn’t snarky about it, and snark is my superpower.

My struggle is real.

Suffice to say that Jesus is a big deal to me, and even though I will always have questions and moments of uncertainty, I choose to believe.

I also worry about those in the church who seem consumed with shutting people out rather than welcoming everyone in. Hmmmm, not exactly what Jesus would do, amiright? With that in mind, I wrote and produced a satirical-yet-earnest podcast during the pandemic called “Top Story Tonight: Jesus!” In the podcast, The Greatest Story Ever Told is retold as if today’s modern media and social media existed 2,000 years ago in Judea. Hilarity ensues.

I raised a bunch of money on Kickstarter to fund the production. One of my biggest supporters is a guy in finance who would later introduce me to actor Scott William Winters. “I think you guys should connect,” Finance Guy told me.

So we did.

Photo from Scott Winter Williams

Scott William Winters is everywhere. Over the last 26 years, he’s popped up in films and TV shows from “The People vs. Larry Flynt” to “The Girl from Plainville,” with a million projects in between. Here’s his sizzle reel.

His favorite role is that of Cyril O’Reily in the OG drama from HBO, “Oz.” Why? “I’m working with my brother,” he tells me. That brother is Dean Winters, another veteran actor whom you might recognize as “Mayhem“ from the Allstate ads. (Fun fact: Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons, who works for Farmers Insurance, was also in “Oz.”)

Dean and Scott Winters in “Oz”/HBO

Scott sometimes plays a jerk, or a cop, or a jerky cop. His first big splash was portraying the arrogant Harvard guy who’s verbally eviscerated by Matt Damon’s character in “Good Will Hunting.”

Scott’s usually not cast as a leading man, though he’s come close. “It’s been super, super hard,” he admits about the near-misses. But he also believes it could be for the best, because this long-time actor feels he has a larger role to play. It’s a difficult role: being a Christian in Hollywood. “I think I’ve paid a price, for sure,” he says.

Being religious is considered kinda weird in the entertainment industry (unless maybe you’re a Scientologist?). This is ironic, as Hollywood likes telling stories of redemption. So Scott has taken on a tough assignment. He’s trying to raise money to produce projects that are redemptive against a religious backdrop, as portrayed in classic films, like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Chariots of Fire.”

“There is such a desire in the world for movies that have hope,” he tells me this week as we meet in a park in Redondo Beach. “I just feel very passionately that investing in these kinds of stories is like investing in Uber.” (Uber stock is actually having a good month, fyi.)

But can he sell this idea to investors?

Well, he has some experience in this department.

From Wall Street to Hollywood

Scott was born in New York City, one of four children. He went to Northwestern University in Chicago and studied economics, then went to work on Wall Street after getting his degree. He had a few short stints on trading desks at LF Rothschild and Shearson Lehman Brothers, until the market crashed in October, 1987. “I got fired with, like, 25,000 people.” (Neither firm is around anymore.)

Scott segued to marketing for NYNEX, the former telephone company. “It did not work out well,” he laughs. He was dating an actress at the time, and just for fun, he went to an acting class. “I loved it a lot,” he remembers. “I just felt like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is my lane.’”

So Scott quit the corporate world to become an actor. “I called my brother [Dean] in Milan. He was modeling, and I just told him to knock it off, and come to New York and start acting.”

In his mid-20s Scott landed his first commercial, for dairy company Parmalat. “It was an Italian milk product, and I was on the Intrepid battleship on the Hudson River,” he recalls. “I had to drink 40 glasses of Parmalat milk dressed as an Air Force Pilot.”

More work followed. He and a friend started a theater company, and their productions received good reviews. “Everybody started working.”

In 1995, at the age of 30, Scott won his first guest-star role in “The Prosecutors.” He was going to have a big scene with Stockard Channing and he was very, very nervous.

I’ll get back to that in a few minutes.

Living Hard, Feeling Lost

A lot of wild things happened before that scene with Stockard Channing.

Scott had been raised in the Episcopal church. “It was not very exciting to me,” he says carefully, telling me more than once that he loves all denominations. In college, he struggled with social anxiety and low-level depression — “I was pretty stormy” — and he was searching for “the truth.”

He studied comparative religion, Buddhism (“it just seemed cool”), Taoist philosophy, the Native American medicine wheel. Nothing seemed to provide him with answers. He kept coming back to Christianity. “There was something about Jesus that was different,” Scott says. “He wasn’t talking about leaving the world. He was saying you want to confront the world.”

And when he started acting, he was still searching for meaning. Kinda. “I was partying quite a bit in New York, living like a foolish single man.” One day he came home, “and I opened the Yellow Pages, and I found this chaplaincy program.”

So… to recap… this guy is in his 20s. He’s trying to break into acting. Living pretty fast and loose. And he becomes a chaplain at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

“I did some training, and then I’m praying with people who are dying, or having limbs removed,” he says. Turns out the experience only added to his anxiety. Scott may have been helping people, ”but I was faking it.”

A Holy Shock (or Two)

Around the same time, he broke up with another actress who would go on to become very famous (I don’t know who). Scott was devastated. His life was kind of a mess.

One night in his little studio apartment on 13th street, he prayed. “I said, ‘Father, I don’t know if you’re real, but if you are, I would be so honored if you would reveal yourself to me.’”

Immediately, Scott says, he went from feeling depressed to a state of bliss. “It was palpable, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re real.’” He also says he saw “a blue luminescence” in the corner of his room, “unless I’m imagining it.” He believes he encountered the Holy Spirit, and he calls it one of the greatest moments of his life.

Scott says he woke up the next morning feeling freer.

Fast forward to the day before his first big job in television and the scene with Stockard Channing. Scott says he was very nervous about it, and he didn’t know what to do. He decided to go old school, as in Old Testament. He fasted and prayed.

After about two hours of talking to God — “nothing hyper-religious” — Scott suddenly felt a jolt go through his body. “The Holy Spirit came and touched me in a super powerful way, like electricity.”

Then he felt a second jolt.

He believes he was not alone in those moments, that the Great Comforter, another name for the Holy Spirit, was with him.

Scott talks a lot about the Holy Spirit, even though it’s the part of the Trinity in Christianity that gets the least attention because it’s the hardest to understand. “The biggest thing missing from the church is the Holy Spirit,” he tells me. But Scott says the Spirit is the part of the Trinity who is with us in this life on this planet, the one who gives us spiritual gifts (which do not include snark) and is available to everyone.

I have to tell you, for an actor who is very good at playing bad guys, Scott William Winters is transformed when he talks about his faith. He is genuine and optimistic, and he makes no apologies.

A Christian in Tinseltown Who’d Still Like to Be George Clooney

Being so openly Christian can be a hard sell in the entertainment business. “According to the Hollywood system, yes, it’s hurt me a little bit,” Scott says. “I don’t know how much, it’s hard to tell.”

He then reveals a secret. “Hollywood is also an industry that has a lot of believers, and a lot of them are just…” (he makes a motion to zip his lips shut) ... “because they want to work.” There’s even a Hollywood Prayer Network which prays for the industry.

However, as much joy as his faith brings him, Scott is the first to admit he still struggles with the desire for the fame and professional recognition that all actors seek.

The spotlight of stardom that shines on George Clooney and Brad Pitt has eluded him. “I spend quite a bit of time [thinking], ‘Oh, I wish I’d gotten that role,” Scott says with a sigh. “I’ve had to crawl my way out of that.” But if he was a headline-generating star, he fears it would take his eyes off Jesus. “I would be finding my significance through achievements and rewards and how other people see me.”

Pitching Hope to Producers

Scott and his wife, Jennifer Logan, have started a nonprofit called Merciful, “dedicated to coming alongside those who desire to be merciful and change the world.” They’re involved in mission trips abroad, and here at home, they’ve started a new outreach program for high school students called “Burgers and Hope.” It involves an In-n-Out truck, so… I’m in.

Most importantly, Scott is bringing that same spirit of mercy and hope to his professional life. He’s writing and developing scripts, working with Todd Komarnicki, who wrote “Elf” and “Sully.” They’re currently shopping a script for a film called “The River Thief,” a real-life story about an Irish cage fighter from the 1800s named Jerry McAuley who went on to start the first rescue mission in the country to feed and shelter the poor. “It’s ‘Gangs of New York’ meets ‘Redemption,’” Scott tells me. (As you know, everything in Hollywood has to be described in one sentence comparing it to past hits. Like… “Wells $treet is ‘Wall Street’ meets ‘Trading Places.’”)

But how do you pitch investors to fund a film like this, a movie that — heaven forbid — involves religion? Scott says that’s a good question, and then he answers it with another question. “What if you were going to invest in a Steven Spielberg movie about King Nebuchadnezzar, and Idris Elba is going to play King Nebuchadnezzar?” He says with the right stories and talent, success is possible and even predictable. “It’s like any other investment, right?”

Funny thing is, of all the things in Hollywood that have made him nervous, Scott says pitching these scripts doesn’t stress him out at all.

“People go to Hollywood because they want a happy ending. It feels like freedom, and you’re taking part in stories which are about romance, conflict, adventure,” he says. It’s the same story with faith. “God’s not ‘religious.’ He’s offering freedom, but in that, there’s conflict, romance, and there’s adventure.”

And in that adventure, this actor wants a starring role.

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Easter Bonus: Was Jesus Wealthy?

You know I like to follow the money, but I never expected to follow Jesus’ money. I always figured Jesus and his merry band of brothers barely made enough to feed and clothe themselves.

Why did I think that? There’s nothing in the New Testament to suggest they were struggling. He’d worked as a carpenter. Many of his disciples were fishermen, and Matthew was a tax collector (you know he had cash!).

Jesus told his disciples to take nothing with them as they went out to preach (Luke 9:3), but that doesn’t mean they were destitute. In fact, some suggest Jesus had a lot of money. Scott even calls him “one of the wealthiest men in Israel.”

WHAT?

Well for starters, Jesus was a rabbi — probably the most popular rabbi of the day, preaching to large crowds sometimes numbering in the thousands. As rabbi, he may have been paid a “terumah,” a tithe that equaled anywhere from 1/60th to 1/40th the weekly wage of someone in his audience. Multiply that by those thousands people over three years and, well, okay then!

“Jesus had a lot of money,” says Scott. “He just didn’t care about money.”

Others signs of potential wealth: Roman soldiers gambled over Jesus’ garments (John 19:23); he had wealthy supporters, like Joseph of Arimathea; and the ministry had enough money that Jesus had to task one of his 12 disciples to be treasurer (John 13:29).

Who was the treasurer? Judas.

Mind blown.

I have to think about this some more.

I’ve given you some great talking points for Easter dinner to steer the conversation away from war, inflation, and politics. You’re welcome! For secular musings, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can also weigh in by joining the conversation below, or 📫 jane@janewells.com. Subscribers receiving this via email can reply directly to this email.