Victor Onuigbo: One man’s story

Finding an actor in my hometown of Burbank, California is about as rare as finding trees in the forest. I have over many years observed that if you were to drop dead while walking down a street in Burbank you would hit three actors before landing on the ground. But meeting an actor who possess everything one needs to become a truly successful actor, now that is extremely rare and yet only recently it happened to me.

One afternoon I was walking my dog, Princess Patsy, her Royal Muttness when I met my friend and neighbor Rick. We began chatting and soon there appeared another man who could not be ignored. He was at least 6 feet 7 inches tall and topped off with an impressive bundle of hair that took him to at least seven feet.

He joined in our conversation and spoke nothing about anything vaguely related to Hollywood; just basic guy stuff. I learned that this very tall man’s name was Victor Onuigbo and that he began his life in Nigeria. Actually I think he is just covering up that he in fact began his life in Wakanda but what do I know.

As our conversation progressed Victor’s demeanor was constantly friendly and bright and the nature of our discussion revealed that he was also extremely witty and intelligent. So here was a man whose vision could simply not be ignored with a very happy and pleasant attitude, a pleasing voice and clearly a sharp wit. Clearly this guy was not yet another actor. So I asked him “Victor, what kind of work do you do?” to which he cheerfully replied “I am an actor.” But that was it, there was no bragging about TV shows or movies just a simple modest statement that he was an actor. Then I knew I had met a man who was on his way to a night in the Spring of some year not too far off walking on a red carpet in front of the Dolby Theatre.

But later I did look him up on IMDb, a data base of absolutely anyone who has ever done anything even remotely connected to film or television and sure enough he had some very impressive credential’s; not yet “star” level but clearly headed in that direction.

Later in other conversations I learned that Victor Onuigbo had been born in Nigeria to a very strong family with a father who was a very well-known and greatly respected physician. But not too long after his birth the government in Nigeria began showing signs of great difficulty and their future looked grim so dad left for America to begin building a new life.

That task was extremely difficult because for his father to resume practicing medicine he had to once again go through internship and residency and then take and pass medical board examinations. While doing this money became very tight and the family was under stress, but they pulled together and dad was successful.

It was that level of drive that inspired Victor to achieve his own level of success his own way. Victor did recall that at around age three or four he and his family lived in Houston, Texas but didn’t particularly care for their life there so they moved up to a better life in Baltimore, Maryland. Victor lived there until about age 14 and then it was on to Eau Claire, Wisconsin and the beginnings of a real commitment to his future in Science and Engineering Management.

He narrowed down his choices for college to the Wharton School and Stanford University and eventually chose Stanford which he loved. He graduated ahead of schedule and took a job with Caesars Gaming Industries in Las Vegas, Nevada. The pay was excellent but he didn’t much care for Las Vegas or the job so he came a little bit further west and began to shift his focus to acting. It didn’t take long for him to land a recurring role on the hit TV series “Shameless.”

After a great deal of internal exploring of his heart, mind and soul Victor Onuigbo is now totally committed to fully developing his acting career. He is not at all interested in being a “star” or parading around on a red carpet; rather he treats his new focus with the same commitment to detail as he employed when working in the field of Science and Engineering Management.

That is one of the many persuasive reasons why I see Victor Onuigbo as a very real star in the making because he fully understands that “show business” is made up of two words and that the second word — business — has twice the letters and ten times the importance of the first word. Watch out Hollywood, Victor Onuigbo has arrived and he is ready to run.

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Top photo: Victor Onuigbo in a YouTube screenshot of the show “Shameless”