Biografia

30 dicembre 1942 · San Diego, California, Stati Uniti

8 maggio 2022 · San Diego, San Diego County, California, Stati Uniti (imprecisato)

Frederick Joseph Ward

1,75 m

When you're a father, you know exactly where your heart really is. There's no question of it, no doubt. That part of your life has no second guessing.

I think it's better for the picture to have as much of me as it can. But I also cherish getting down and doing some acting.

[on when he decided to become an actor] I decided to act when I was in the Air Force. I was going with a stripper in San Antonio, hanging out with some bizarre fringe people--who considered themselves "show people"--including this 250-pound transvestite who designed costumes for strip joints, and a few gangsters. I was a young kid in the middle of this stuff, and it led to my decision. They weren't role models in a strict sense; more like the old freaks in the freak show. When I was younger I always felt like an outsider, and they said it was all right to be "the other." They had a nice little society, a little culture, and they dealt with life. So, as soon as I got out of the Air Force, I went right to New York. I figured that I could do anything I wanted. I had no one to answer to, nothing holding me back.

[The toughest job he ever had] Timber faller. It's the most dangerous, aside from combat, that you can ever have. There are a lot of ways you can get killed. A tree can "barber chair"--come back on you. "Widowmakers," which are dead limbs, can fall out. You can't predict what a tree will do sometimes. You have to watch sawdust and make sure the tree's not rotting. If it is, it might split on you. It's dangerous, it's hot--it's hard work. You have a big chainsaw that's rattling away and bouncing around, and you're slipping and sliding and standing on land that's sometimes nearly straight up and down. It can get crazy. On the other hand, I never wanted to work in an office under fluorescent lights.

[on his life before acting] At one point I was doing theater in San Francisco and actually living in the theater. I was broke. I was boxing--working out in a gym--and this trainer got me into the union. He started putting all the guys in his stable into the union. So I started making money, stopped acting and saved, to get to Europe. I kept moving around. Three years later I started acting again, because acting drove me. But I was still restless. I studied acting in New York for only six months before I wanted to get a ship for Europe. I'd heard that in Brooklyn you could get into the Scandinavian maritime union and get a ship without having papers. Wound up in Florida, then New Orleans, then Houston. I eventually came to California, worked in a bowling alley as a short-order cook. I drifted, picked tomatoes and beans and lived in labor camps in Ventura County. I wound up in Big Sur. I just kept moving. I went to Ketchikan, Alaska, lived with the Indians in stilt houses, worked in a lumber mill. And I still knew I would get back into acting. Eventually I traveled to Yugoslavia on a freighter, then went to Valencia, Spain, and then on to Tangier. I spent three months in Morocco. I wound up in Rome, and finally started acting.