Take a closer look at some of Hollywood's top-tier talent at the beginning of their careers.

Child Stars, Then and Now

Take a closer look at some of Hollywood&#39;s top-tier talent at the beginning of their careers.

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Meet Sam Casey, the dynamic actor, filmmaker, and musician set to redefine horror cinema.

Samuel Mark "Sam" Casey was born in Dallas, Texas, to mother Margaret Irene (Wasiak), a banker and vocalist; and Barry Casey, a lawyer, flag distributor, former DJ, and outdoorsman. He was raised in Southlake, Texas with his older brother Barry James Casey. He is of mostly Irish, French, German, Polish, and Lithuanian ancestry; with about 6% Choctaw and 3% Cherokee ancestry. His middle name, Mark, is the same as his uncle's on his mother's side, a Catholic family. Casey's upbringing, rich in artistic influences, laid the foundation for his multifaceted career.

Sam's journey through the realms of cinema began at the age of 9, igniting an unwavering passion for every facet of filmmaking. With roots deeply entrenched in acting, writing, producing, directing, music, and cinematography, Casey's multifaceted talents transcend traditional boundaries.

Casey's foray into composing for the featurette Mile High (release date TBD), spurred by the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, exemplifies his innovative spirit. While sound designing the featurette Mile High, a pendulum sort of sound was wanted for hypnotic effect; but a composer could not be afforded, so Casey bought a couple of synthesizers, started turning knobs, and the rest became history.

Cementing his beginning in cinematic history as an actor that commonly plays morally ambiguous characters, he also has a starring role in the movie as a kingpin in control of an unknown drug. Casey shared the role of cinematographer with another multi-faceted artist-- Buddy Love, the movie's writer, director, and one of the movie's main characters. A friend since high school, he has become a frequent collaborator of Casey's. This was the first time they both collaborated with Garrett Avey and Lucas Looch Johnson as actors. From crafting mesmerizing soundscapes to cinematography, Casey's dedication to storytelling knows no bounds.

Other noteworthy collaborations, such as the acclaimed "Laughing Since '76" commercial for The Laugh Factory and festival darlings like "The Gift," "Kingdom Come," and "Menticide" underscore Casey's prowess as a performer, producer, and creative force behind the camera.

Despite all the hat-wearing, it's Casey's unyielding commitment to the horror genre that sets him apart. Inspired by chilling encounters while exploring the abandoned Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells, Texas before renovations began, Casey is on a mission to terrify audiences with narratives that linger long after the credits roll. With projects like the upcoming "Mile High;" "Progressor" which Casey co-directed with Josh Leftwich (another movie with Casey as a starring role, composer, and cinematographer); and the upcoming horror film "Scream Queen" that Casey has adapted from his experiences in The Baker and the film industry as a whole; Casey's vision promises to push the boundaries of fear.

He has seen recent commercial success, wearing as many hats as he could on "Laughing Since '76," both a commercial and a pre-show introduction that plays before stand-up comedy shows at The Laugh Factory; working as an actor, composer, co-director, co-writer, co-producer, and co-cinematographer with frequent collaborator Josh Leftwich; whom he met at Santa Fe University of Art and Design (SFUAD) in Santa Fe, New Mexico while living and making movies together in the same dormitory hallway as Riley James, whom was flown in for the project. With this, they created the branding assets and jingle seen at the end of Laugh Factory videos.

Casey is no stranger to festival success: notably as an actor playing multiple characters in The Gift (2022), which won the Audience Award at the Kodak 100 Feet of Film Contest at The Atlanta Film Festival; and with receiving cinematography awards on both Menticide (2021) and Kingdom Come (2021) by writer-directors Zachary Moore and Buddy Love, respectively. In Menticide he played a mysterious scientist that puts women under mind control, appearing to them in hypnotic states to make them conduct a series of abductions of other morally corrupt people. He also composed the original music for the movie. He additionally worked on Kingdom Come as a producer; shooting it at The Casey Family Ranch in black-and-white.

Since a very young age he had the compulsion to see what he wasn't allowed if his parents couldn't catch him-- soaking in 80's slasher flicks; adult comedies and video games; mature Batman comics; stand-up specials; and Stanley Kubrick movies. In elementary school, he was in school musicals twice a year and made serial comics that were comedically-focused, along with musician Ben Randall. In middle school he focused on sports, only being in one improvised play at the end of eighth grade. Though he won the student of the year award, he did not do theater in high school because he did not like musicals; yet in early high school, he quit football in order to join his school's speech team doing Humorous Interpretation events. But when he joined his school's TV program as a news anchor for the announcements and as a sketch producer that played on the projector board in every classroom after the pledge aired in his Junior year, the world of competitive theater became uninteresting to him.

Soon after this and before his senior year, he took a summer course in filmmaking at The University of Texas at Austin, and began the Long-Form Improv course from Dallas Comedy House (now Dallas Comedy Club), while going to the weekly improv jams there and at Four-Day Weekend in Fort Worth, where he also trained for a time. Around this time, he met Buddy Love, Zachary Moore, Garrett Avey, and Jesse Scholz as filmmakers at high schools near his own, all starved of people to make movies with at their own high schools. Casey first collaborated with Love as an actor on Amateur Hour (2015). Then Casey went to SFUAD and made What if NASA Was Real? (2015), a parody of found-footage and conspiracy movies; and Are You Shitting Me? (2015), a parody of plot-driven action movies; both collaborations with Riley James as the cinematographer, and Josh as an actor in Are You Shitting Me?. He also had a starring role in Carl in the Wasteland (2016) as an antagonist's high-tempered sidekick; a movie he co-wrote with director Josh Leftwich, shot by Riley James. During this time he was the vice president of the on-campus improv club; taught improv exercises to actors and students; producing and performing shows on the campus.

With a strong focus on comedy, the Harold Ramis Film School (HRFS, now The Second City Film School) at The Second City in Chicago was announced and he left SFUAD, knowing where to go if he wanted further schooling. So he went back to Texas, graduating from Dallas Comedy House's Long-Form Improv course; he returned to weekly improv jams at Dallas Comedy Club, Four-Day-Weekend, and intermittently at The University of North Texas; with improvisors that eventually became the group Sparky, which competed in the National College Improv Tournament in 2018. With this club he exchanged unique exercises with improvisors; commonly being in the Denton area while collaborating with Love and Moore, working with them on Night Light (filmed 2016, released 2019) directed by Buddy Love, executively produced by Zachary Moore, and with Ben Randall composing.

During this time and into 2017, he took multiple urban exploring adventures into The Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells, Texas, with Buddy Love and Zachary Moore on several occasions, and with other friends on several locations to scout it out, initially to make a guerilla film that would make fun of ghost hunters. They sustain that they experienced paranormal activity; and Casey has been focused on writing, composing, and building a performance for a horror film inspired by the encounters since then.

For the first part of 2017, he went back to Santa Fe and acted in Anterograde (filmed 2017), a science-fiction neo-noir where he plays an antagonistic scientist probing a man with memory loss; adapted from the Voigt-Kampff scene at the beginning of Blade Runner (1982). This was his first dramatic role, directed and written by Josh Leftwich while living with him in Santa Fe, which won the Best Sophomore Film of the Year Award at SFUAD. Riley James was brought in as the cinematographer. The school closed down after this period, and Casey went back to Texas to shoot, produce, and act in Mile High (shot 2017-2018), collaborating again with Love and Moore and for the first time with Garrett Avey and Lucas Looch Johnson.

He studied Comedic Filmmaking at HRFS through 2018, where he met frequent collaborators Diego Torrado and Eric Fretty. Casey performed as a homeless man in a musical at The Second City called Why Are You Singing? (2018) to great reviews as a comedic actor. He also acted and did cinematography for other student films, notably cinematography for Rebound Richard (2018) and the student film he wrote, directed, acted in, and composed, Youse Not So Bad (filmed 2018, release date TBD); a noir comedy, playing two separate versions of himself; with Cody Hilliard as the director of photography.

During his stay at HRFS and after graduating, and because many students from SFUAD had migrated to schools in Chicago such as SAIC and Columbia, Casey again collaborated as an actor with director Josh Leftwich who was at Columbia in Malort: For Those Bitter Moments (2019) as an alcoholic in a failing relationship; and again collaborated with Josh Leftwich on Harry Had a Plan (2019) as a cinematographer. Commonly hanging out in the Columbia and SAIC dorms, he met Hilliard and did the cinematography on Hilliard's What Could Be (2019). Hilliard was attending the last cinematography undergraduate program to include 16mm film cameras in the assignments, and here Sam developed a knowledge of shooting on celluloid. Hilliard additionally collaborated with Casey as a cinematographer on Youse Not So Bad and on Malort: For Those Bitter Moments; as a gaffer on Harry Had a Plan and Kingdom Come (2021), and as assistant camera on Rebound Richard (2018).

In late 2019, Casey came back to Texas to work on a reality TV show being filmed at The Baker Hotel that was beginning renovation, hiring him after they had heard about his adventures inside. Casey, upon hearing that they were not interested in a free night photography shoot of the location with other associates and were not going for aesthetics of abandonment at the time, he became further focused on getting to the point as a producer where he could make a horror movie without budget limitations.

In 2020, he was picked as a vocalist for a cover band which was scheduled to open for the AC/DC cover band Back in Black, but the band broke up in the early stages when the COVID-19 Pandemic hit. He still practices vocals and piano daily.

He spent large portions of 2020-2023 finishing the editing process of Mile High, experiencing festival success with director Zachary Moore and Buddy Love on Menticide (2021) and Kingdom Come (2021). He also acted in Journey Into Night (2021) as a wandering alcoholic that freestyle raps in order to ask for a cigarette, with Josh Leftwich as writer-director; and shot All the Same (2021), with frequent collaborators and actor/directors Max Perkins and William Magnuson.

In 2021, Casey co-directed Progressor (release date TBD) with Josh Leftwich, co-written with Casey by Buddy Love; starring Casey as a liberal man that drinks a whiskey which makes people become conservative during a dinner party with a family of liberal Southern Baptists whom he is marrying into, lead by his fiance's antagonistic preacher brother, Buddy Love's character. This also marks their first major collaboration with actor Diego Torrado. This was originally a TV pilot, and is being edited instead into a featurette to be composed by Casey. Casey is also set to release music projects that he has written and recorded over the years.

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