This month, the world saw Andy Stahl take to the silver screen as Joseph M. Ray – the Bowling Green native and president of Texas Western University – in the hit movie &#8220Glory Road.”

He’s had small roles in the &#8220The Patriot” and &#8220The River,” both starring Mel Gibson. In &#8220The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James,” he acted with Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson – so well his own mother didn’t recognize him when he rode past her and June Carter Cash on a horse as they watched the movie being filmed.

But there was a time when Stahl, who lives in rural Butler County and has appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows, was happy about much smaller productions. During a grade school talent show in California decades ago, &#8220out comes Andy and he plays that Elvis Presley song (‘Blue Suede Shoes’),” said his mom, Toni Stahl, who lives near him. &#8220And he played and sang that on stage and I looked around and some of the teachers standing against the wall actually got on their knees laughing. He was the cutest thing up there and was called back three times.”

But that wasn’t what impressed Toni Stahl most. She was shocked young Andy, now 53, taught himself to play the guitar without her knowing it.

When he grew up wanting to become an actor, Toni Stahl worried about her son’s choice. &#8220It surprised me,” she said. &#8220I thought, ‘Oh gosh. This is such a terrible thing to get into,’ mainly because I didn’t understand it myself.”

What she didn’t know was that her son had a passion and a talent that would drive him to be a working actor.

&#8220Of course, he started off at Horse Cave Theatre,” she said, &#8220and when I saw him in the ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and a few (other) things up there, I really changed my mind. Š I thought, ‘This is it. This is what he should do.’ ”

Toni Stahl spoke of her son from her farm, where earlier last week he told his life story.

&#8220To me, I think he’s a very, very good actor,” she said, &#8220and I don’t think I’m saying it because he’s my son.”

Andy Stahl was born in San Antonio. His mom was a homemaker. His dad, the now late Charles Stahl, was a transport pilot for an airline. His father’s job meant the family moved a lot.

&#8220I lived from San Antonio to Miami to Oklahoma City and all of that before I was 5 years old,” Andy Stahl said.

In his early grade school years, the Stahl family lived in Walnut Creek, Calif. Then, Charles Stahl’s life and job changed.

&#8220His eyesight was slipping,” Andy Stahl said, &#8220and he was too old to fly jets.”

So Charles Stahl, 49, packed his family in a travel trailer, and with a 1956 pink Buick and an unreliable semi truck that held their possessions, he moved it to his native Butler County, where he would run the family farm.

For Andy Stahl, it was an adventure.

&#8220We saw the Grand Canyon and things like that” on the trip, he said. &#8220But mostly, we sat on the road waiting for someone to fix the truck.”

Andy Stahl loved Kentucky life. He ran around barefoot, played in ponds, camped, hiked and made some good friends. For a while, he went to school in Butler County, but when his mom got a job at Western Kentucky University, he began going to the now long-gone College High, where he played basketball, developed a passion for music and honed his talent in visual art.

In Bowling Green, Andy Stahl’s art became well-known. He did shows around town and painted a well-loved portrait of Nick Wilkins of Bowling Green as Broadway the Clown.

But Andy Stahl couldn’t decide which form of art he most wanted to focus on.

&#8220I played with all these little bands around town,” including The Lonely Souls Delegation, he said.

But the one form of art he longed to try eluded him.

As a boy, he’d been thrilled to live so close to the television station that has become WBKO-TV and since moved into Bowling Green. In his spare time, he’d hang out at the station to see how the shows went on the air. He dreamed of someday being an actor.

But Andy Stahl thought he was too shy to try it. It wasn’t until he went to Western to study mass communications with an emphasis in film that he tried acting, because it was a requirement for his drama minor. He never dreamed when he auditioned for a play, as an assignment, he would win a role. But he did and soon he caught the acting bug.

&#8220It boosted my self-confidence to say I could do it,” he said.

Though Andy Stahl worked at selling real estate after college because he thought it was practical, he could not stay away from acting. He helped found the Capitol Arts Center and Fountain Square Players and went on to become an intern at Horse Cave Theatre when he was in his mid-20s. There, he studied with founder Warren Hammack and made many friends in acting. He also met Leigh Smith, the girl who would become his wife and the mother of his now 19-year-old son, Reuben.

With Smith, Andy Stahl moved to New York City to try to find work in acting while she studied dance education at Columbia University. Andy Stahl studied with famed acting coaches Wynn Handman and Jack Waltzer. He supported himself by helping people move in the pick-up truck he’d brought from Kentucky.

&#8220I realized I could start hiring out at $30 an hour and move people,” he said.

And he could set his own schedule so he could attend auditions. But breaking into acting in New York was tough. There, actors were more than abundant. So, he used his moving services to help him further his craft.

&#8220Because I was the truck driver for the (famed Actors) Studio, the deal I made with them was I got to monitor the classes,” Andy Stahl said.

He calls the learning in New York &#8220essential” to helping him get his first motion picture role as Mel Gibson’s neighbor, Dave Birkin, in &#8220The River.”

But Andy Stahl didn’t find that role from New York. He found it through an agent in Nashville, which was close to the Butler County home he’d return to whenever he could.

Eventually, he realized it would be easier to get jobs from Nashville and decided to make it his home.

Through the years, his work came in stops and starts. When lots of TV movies were being made in the southeast, Andy Stahl had a lot of work. When movies started increasingly being made in Canada because of financial reasons, work in the southeast dried up. But Andy Stahl always managed to work, though sometimes he spent a lot of time in Butler County working at the farm and watching his money closely, just in case.

Through the years, he’s had parts in the mini series &#8220North and South” and &#8220North and South, Book II”; and the movies &#8220The Real McCoy,” &#8220October Sky,” &#8220The Journey of August King,” &#8220A Time to Kill” and &#8220The People Vs. Larry Flint,” just to name a few. He had a prominent role in the short-lived TV show &#8220Christy” and three &#8220Christy” movies. He’s been on &#8220Matlock,” &#8220In the Heat of the Night” and &#8220SeaQuest DSV.”

Soon, he’ll be seen in &#8220Big Momma’s House 2.”

What he really wants is a role that will allow him to be a well-known character actor like Harry Dean Stanton. That’s why he’s planning to soon move to Canada, where he’s been approved for citizenship and where many TV show pilots are filmed. He said he hope he’ll get a good TV show.

But if he doesn’t, he’ll just keep trying, always looking for more work while returning to Butler County when he can to help his mom with the farm, getting back into painting or even playing music with the idea he could develop a regional following.

&#8220My work is finding work,” Andy Stahl said.

But that’s not all he is about. The now-single man thinks a lot about his son, whom he said is a successful club manager in Nashville, and the children of a woman with whom he had a long relationship after he and his wife divorced.

His mom says he’s a devoted son.

&#8220Ever since his dad passed away in ’88, I’ve felt that I could call on him for anything,” she said. &#8220He’s been a big help to me on the farm. I live on a farm, but I’m not a farmer … I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t been around.”

Jeff Reed, conductor of the Bowling Green Chamber Orchestra, said Andy Stahl is a great all-around guy who was friendly and professional when he narrated the orchestra’s &#8220Nutcracker Suite” concert last year. Now, Reed is happy to call Andy Stahl his friend.

&#8220What impressed me about Andy is he’s very unassuming, not a self-promoter,” Reed said. &#8220You wouldn’t know the guy’s been in scenes with Mel Gibson and worked with Andy Griffith. He’s a modest person and that’s very impressive. He just works away at his craft and has been very successful. I think he brings a lot of pride and honor to our community.”

Now, Andy Stahl is anxious to hear what the public thinks about &#8220Glory Road,” which is about the Texas Western basketball team that started five black players for the first time in NCAA tournament history and beat Adolph Rupp’s University of Kentucky Wildcats in the national championship.

&#8220It’s admirable because it looks at a lot of things,” he said. &#8220That film was kind of full of moments.”