ProRodeo Sports News - August 6, 2021

COWBOY ROOTS

MAN Soul C. Thomas Howell: Actor, Musician, Cowboy BY SCOTT KANIEWSKI ommy Howell had a choice to make.

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The teenage, up-and- coming actor had two successful movies under his belt – “E.T.” and “The Outsiders.” But Howell, who most movie buffs know as C. Thomas Howell, had a different childhood dream. He wanted to be a world champion cowboy. • • • Howell grew up on the rodeo trail. His father, Chris, was a professional bull rider. The single dad took Tommy everywhere with him. Because of it, Howell grew up with a rope in his hands. But his dad was also a stuntman in Hollywood, Calif. So Tommy was around movies. He wasn’t sure what to do. He was a PRCA

permit holder in the mid-80s and had just come close to winning at Salinas, Calif. He’d been a California state junior all-around champion three consecutive years (1979-81). He knew rodeo held a career path for him. But so did acting. So he sought out some advice. “It was Walt Woodard that I had a very long conversation with,” Howell, now 54, recently told ProRodeo Sports News . “He was a world champion at the time. I really revered Walt. Still do. He’s a good man. I went up to him and said, ‘Listen, I’ve done these two pictures.’ “I was about to be 16. I was roping the best I ever roped. … I told him what was going on: ‘Walt, I have the opportunity to do these movies, but they’re taking me away from my roping and I don’t know what to do because I want to be a world champion cowboy.’ “Walt looked at me and looked into my soul and he said, ‘Son, you go be an actor, you go travel the world and you go be something. You can come back here and rope some other

Photo courtesy C. Thomas Howell C. Thomas Howell shares a quiet moment with one of his horses. His acting career included Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders” where he shared the screen with Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze and Matt Dillon.

ProRodeo Sports News 8/6/2021

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