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Michael Ballew (1947-2023)

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Alias:
Mike Ballew
Wesley Micheal Ballew
Wesley Micheal “Mike” Ballew

Birthplace:
Seattle, Washington, USA

Born:
July 16, 1947

Died:
October 22, 2023

Biography from TheMovieDB

Michael Ballew was an American actor, stuntman and transportation coordinator. He began playing football as a high school freshman after his family moved to Leavenworth, Washington, and he received a partial football scholarship to Shoreline Community College in Seattle. After junior college, he transferred to the University of Washington to study sociology. After college, he played as a defensive end for the Hagerstown Bears, a minor league team in Maryland, for two seasons. He was signed to the Chicago Bears in 1973, and played half a season with the team before being cut. He moved to Newport Beach and was signed to the Southern California Sun of the now-defunct World Football League in 1974. His football career ended in 1976, when the Los Angeles Rams cut him during training camp. Southern California Sun coach Tom Fears, who worked as a technical adviser on football movies, gave Ballew his first break in the movie industry. He also found work through his friend Lorenzo Lamas, and was manager of his GTO class automobile racing team until 1989. He died on October 22, 2023 after a battle with progressive supranuclear palsy.

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Additional information:

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Film Performances

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Film Production

Driver:
1991  Suburban Commando
2001  Donnie Darko

Stunts:
1991  Suburban Commando
2001  Donnie Darko

Transportation Co-Captain:
1991  Suburban Commando
2001  Donnie Darko
2004  Breakin' All the Rules

Transportation Coordinator:
1991  Suburban Commando
2000  Damned If You Do
2001  Donnie Darko
2004  Breakin' All the Rules

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TV Performances

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While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

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