The young actor had extensive training before he took on his first film role, but considers himself "extremely lucky" in his new career. Born and raised in El Dorado, Arkansas, Ragsdale first became interested in acting at age 11 when his parents took him to a local production of "The Wizard of Oz." "There weren't 40 Munchkins living in my home town, so the show used children instead," says Ragsdale, "and when I saw the fun they were having up there, and heard the applause, I decided to get into little theater."
His interest in acting persisted over the next 10 years, during which time he attended a children's acting workshop, performed in community plays and with his high school and college drama clubs. But, he didn't decide on acting as a career until he was close to graduating from Hendrix College.
"Actually, it was my parents that made the suggestion to me," Ragsdale says. "They knew I liked acting better than the other 'serious' careers I was considering, and that was all it took for me to make the leap."
After graduation from college, Ragsdale studied acting with the Drama Studio of London at Berkeley, where he starred in productions of "Company," "Uncle Vanya," "The Two Noble Kinsmen" and "Electra." Since finishing his training, he worked primarily in theater, appearing in "Bleacher Bums" at the California Conservatory Theatre and "Louisiana Cavalier" at the Grand Encore Theatre in Los Angeles. He also played a supporting role in american Playhouse Productions' "Fifteen," which was tentatively scheduled for theartical release before airing on PBS.
On a visit to Los Angeles, Ragsdale phoned Jackie Burch, a casting director he had met when Peter Bogdanovich was testing young actors for the lead in "Mask" some months earlier. "She didn't have time for lunch," Ragsdale recalls, "but she did ask me to come in to read for the 'Fright Night' part the next day and then again two days later. Over the next six weeks, I must have flown back and forth between San Francisco and Los Angeles five times. When they called to say I had the part, it was Halloween night."
Although he knew that the film's scenes would be shot out of sequence, Ragsdale was amazed by the degree to which that was true. "To actually do scenes out of order, lines within the scenes out of order, takes a tremendous amount of concentration," he says. "It's extremely difficult. Since Charley is terrified throughout much of the movie, I had to work out the stags that he goes through, which must be a lot like the stages of accepting death: denial, anger, etc. I hope that the chronological order I worked out these emotions in comes out on film."
Three weeks into the production, during the last take of the day on Christmas Eve, Ragsdale broke his foot running down a staircase, and production was suspended briefly to allow the injury to heal. The accident didn't quell his enthusiasm. "It slowed me down a bit," the actor says, "but I came back. Rod Martin, a trainer for the Los Angeles Raiders, came in every day to wrap the foot for me, and the shooting schedule was rearranged to put off the action sequences until it mended. Nobody panicked. In fact, I think that the thing I'll remember most about this movie is everyone's spirit and humor."
For more info on William Ragsdale go to imdb.com.
BIOGRAPHY