The first thing film extra/actor and comedian Tommy Connolly talks about is the Extra Hands of Hope holiday drive he helped organize among actors and extra to collect “gently used” toys and winter clothing to help needy families in South Side neighborhoods.
The second thing he forthrightly talks about is his chilling story of how his recovery from demonic addictions and the Extra Hands drive are related.
Since he began his arduous road to sobriety five years ago, after 28 years of alcoholism and drug addiction, Connolly’s mission has been finding “ways to give back to the people who helped me when I was trying to get off the street,” he says.
The idea for Extra Hands came from another extra, James Petrean, with whom Connolly has worked on various films. “He said, ‘Why don’t we do something like ‘Toys for Tots,’ and me, with my troubled past and the whole thing being about giving back, I agreed it was a good idea.”
For the past two years, Connolly, 44, has been a consistently busy performer. He calls his career “an amazing start” of a new life, considering his past chaotic lifestyle experiences. He has been sober for five years, and off drugs for 34 months, an anniversary he noted on Nov. 17, the kickoff of the Extra Hands drive.
He’s been cast as an extra, or has had small speaking parts, in just about every feature, TV series and pilot that’s filmed here in the past two years. Recently he had a role in indie film, “Chasing Hollywood,” that screened at the 2011 Naperville Film Festival and had a featured part in an episode of “Extreme Animal Phobia,” on Animal Planet.
Come January, Connolly will play an adult store owner in “Redial,” a local indie film filming here, from writer/director Dion Strowhom of 9×18 Productions.
He admits that when he has a speaking part, “it’s usually that of a darker character.”
Acting derives from playing a character he wasn’t
His acting talent is quite natural as it draws from his former experiences. “Living in the streets and having to convince people that I worked with that I wasn’t a drunk or a drug addict was always an act,” he says.
For many years Connolly was a functioning alcoholic, wearing a suit and tie as an executive employed by a local security alarm firm. “I never drank on the job,” he says. “But when I took speed and smoked pot it was in large amounts and I had to hide it from the people I worked with. When you’re an alcoholic you are always either thinking about drinking or suffering massive hangovers from drinking.
“I learned how to act to be the businessman –- a big charade, really — while keeping to myself ‘what you really don’t know is that Trixie got busted for crack at the motel last night.’”
Alcoholism began at 17 and lasted 28 years.
Coming from an Irish family, Connolly says, drinking whiskey was in his DNA, “a normalcy in my life.” He was hooked on booze with his first sip of Jim Beam when he was a 17 year old junior in high school in the Southwest suburbs.
He was never a social drinker. ”For me, it was to get drunk. If you asked me to have a beer with you, I wouldn’t. I drank to escape reality and didn’t know why. I suffered from multiple panic attacks each day, knowing what I was doing was wrong,” he says.
Connolly drifted, oblivious, through what should have been the most productive period of his life. His short-lived marriages fueled his addictions. He was fired from his high-salaried nine-to-five job but found a variety of low-paying menial jobs.
“I worked nights as the boss of people who didn’t speak English,” he relates. “I never drank on the job but as soon as I got off work, I’d drink a pint of whiskey in the car in about two minutes with no chaser and then get a few hours sleep.”
Most of his homelessness was spent on the strip of garish clubs and motels in Stone Park. “I lived in an old, unheated car on and off for almost two years. When I got paid I’d rent a room in a cheap, roach infested motel and spend all my money on booze,” he relates.
Achieving recovery means helping others
Connolly started “making the turn” away from his addictions after a car accident put him into a clinical coma. He consequently went into rehab.
“God gave me like 635 chances,” he says. “I tried to get sober numerous times by myself but when I finally gave myself up to God, I went into recovery and listened and trusted other human beings. Recovery is helping others and through that I got out of myself and out of my devious playground of my mind.”
Although Connolly feels that talking so openly about his addiction could hurt his acting – “and that’s okay,” he says.
“If I never make it as a big actor, that’s fine. I’ve been blessed. I feel in 18 months I’ve done more than people in a long career don’t always get to do.”
As part of earning forgiveness for his past transgressions and the people he’s hurt, Connolly gives freely of his time. He performs his comedy act as part of Comics for Convicts, where he tells stories about addiction and gives the prisoners faith. He also does his act at fundraisers for people with illnesses.
His book, called “Soul Parole: Making Peace with my Mind, God and Myself,” recounting his addictions battle and recovery, will be published by Amazon early next year.
Drop boxes at 20 locations
Extra Hands of Hope is targeted to serve some 800 families in Englewood, Lawndale and Logan Square. Their greatest need is for warm winter clothing for adults and children.
He and Petrean organized 20 drop box locations for toys and clothes throughout the city and suburbs, and teamed with Keith Vosler of Urban Youth Outreach to spearhead the effort.
The acting community can bring their donations of clothing and toys to the offices of Claire Simon Casing, O’Connor Casting and Pascal & Rudnicke, from now through Dec. 17.
Click here for drop boxes near you.
Tommy Connolly can be reached at 815/260-6974 or tommyconnolly@att.net. His popular blog is TommyConnolly.blogspot.com.
Financial contributions are also welcome and may be made here or send to Urban Youth Outreach, P.O. Box 21144, Chicago, 60621.
