Meet Thom Michael Mulligan

Today we’d like to introduce you to Thom Michael Mulligan.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I’m an actor and producer from NYC originally and was introduced to acting at the age of 7 yrs when my mom who was a wonderful theatre actress in NY decided to take me to an audition for a play she was reading for so I could see what it was like to be an actress.

There was a role in the play called street scene for a kid, and they cast me in the play with my mom and my very first line as an actor was “Hey ma, gimme a dime, I wanna buy a cone.”

I did two other plays with my mom and then was cast in 3 other plays on my own by directors who saw me in plays with my mom!

By the time I reached ten years old, I was more focused on sports, baseball, hockey, basketball, etc. and let acting go as my dream became wanting to be a major league baseball pitcher. I played throughout HS and college and in 1971, was actually offered a minor league contract to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers class a baseball farm team in the California state league.

I turned it down, thinking maybe I could get a shot with NY Yankees as they were my hometown team.

It did not work out, and I continued to think about acting, as I think it was still always inside me and at the age of 30, i moved back into NYC and started my acting career, spending the first 10 years there, studying, taking classes, doing a lot theatre, commercials, worked on some of the different soap operas in NY like, All My Children, Ryan’s Hope and a few others and eventually made my way out to California in 1994.

Since I have been in California, i have continued to work hard on my craft as actor, working in a lot of feature films, short films, doing theatre, taking ongoing classes, spending a lot of time in la taking classes there and for the past for years have been taking classes at halo cinematic in San Diego, run by William and Kimy wall doing improv and acting for on-camera work and has been a very fluid class where we get to work on many different aspects of acting.

It’s been one of my favorite places to work, study experiment and grow as an actor.

I have been signed with Pam Pahnke at elegance talent in Carlsbad since I came here in 1994 and it’s been a wonderful experience to work with Pam.

One of the major highlights of my career has been being a co-founder and executive director of submissions of the new hope film festival in new hope, pa, now heading into our 10th year, with this years festival, screening 89 films and 27 scripts, from 17 countries and from the very first year in 2010, we became an international film festival.

The festival, which started over a breakfast conversation in 2009, was incorporated by chairman Doug Whipple, who does an amazing job helming the festival and keeping things moving forward!

The other big highlight of my career was producing and acting in the multi-award-winning feature film Callous in 2007 which was based on a true story about child abuse and family dysfunction and had a run on VOD and 35 cable outlets in the US and Canada

Most recently, I have been writing and producing short films with my very talented, writing and producing partner, Lizet Benrey and our most recent one called the Witching Hour, has been making a great film festival run, leading to a number of awards, including a best actress award for Lizet.

At present, I just finished working on the action thriller feature film, Los Angeles shark attack, from the multi-award-winning director, Dustin Ferguson and was cast in a great role in the film and now in post-production.

The other feature film project I am very excited about is the upcoming, feature film release, sweet taste of souls, the psychological horror thriller, from producers, Bee Pedersen and Felicity Mudgett of Flying Dolphin Productions, was filmed on location in Julian and the San Diego area and directed by Terry Ross, a very well known acting coach and director in San Diego.

I have been acting for the past 40 years, and it’s been a wonderful roller coaster ride of ups and downs with a lot of amazing things happening and I can’t think of anything else I would rather do as hard as this insane crazy craft is !! when I look back it’s been a great, fun journey.

I’m also a US Navy, and Vietnam veteran served in Vietnam in 1969/70 with an honorable discharge.

I have my son Brian and daughter in law Macy, who live in Nashville, TN with my two granddaughters, Emma and Caroline

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Pursuing an acting career is never easy; it takes a lot of hard work, dedication, focus, and persistence to have any kind of success.

I recently read a quote that said “an actor spends 99% of the time looking for work and 1 % getting to do the work.

In terms of some of the struggles along the way,the biggest, was a major health crisis for me for over 10 years, between 1984 and 1996, which had me spending a lot of time in and out of hospitals, related to my lungs which caused me to miss out on a lot of acting jobs and other things as well, as it was a life-threatening illness.

So because of that at times i was ready to give up on my acting dream, but the other side of that was that it also gave me something to continue to hope for and I reached a point where just decided I was going to find an answer, so I could have a life again and continue to do what I love, which is act.

By 1998 I started to get better, started to get a handle on things, healthwise and was able to restart my life in San Diego….so that was my biggest obstacle that I had to overcome.

Other than my family and close friends, most people have no idea that I was deathly ill for over 10 years as it’s not something I like to talk about, but for the context of this article I thought it would be appropriate to share as it was a huge obstacle that I had to overcome in my life to even have a normal life again. The other thing that kept me strong through that whole time was to have the faith that I would find the answer was my son. Brian and wanting to here for him .it helped keep me strong and not give up.

The last ten years have been great as I have my health back and have been able to get back to my acting career.

The struggles of being an actor are easy compared to those health challenges.

Please tell us about your work.
Well, as an actor, I’m known for playing a lot of very edgy bad guy roles, I seem to do those really well.

Also, a lot of detective, FBI, and CIA types of roles.

I think my commitment to the work as an actor, to always have the goal of creating a believable character, to be in the moment of every scene that I do, to always be prepared when I work on a project, to always have my lines down and be prepared to do great work, to be professional on the set. To treat everyone with respect and to bring the best performance, I can to all that I do.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
As fast as acting goes, I don’t know that I would have changed anything, other than possibly studying acting in college, but I think there is no one way to go at this career. I took the route that I did and its brought me to where I am today and as always will continue to keeping growing and getting better in this business and craft.

Contact Info:

• Website: thommichaelmulligan.com
• Phone: 760 250 1913
• Email: thommichaelmulligan@mail.com
• Instagram: Thom_Michael_Mulligan
• Facebook: Facebook.com/thommichaelmulligan
• Other: Imdb.com/name/thommichaelmulligan

Image Credit:
Headshot – Dana Patrick Photography

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