Goines uses variety show to take control of his career
Eddie Goines ‘95 left the NFL behind in 1998 after a string of surgeries and found a new passion in New York City. He took to the stage and became an actor, starring in plays and landing bit parts on soap operas and dramas, like NYPD Blue. He moved to Los Angeles in 2005 and has spent the last seven years trying to hit it big as a leading man. And he’s discovered a hard truth about Hollywood.
“Everyone is of the universal opinion that LA is a lonely place,” says Goines, who played wide receiver for the Wolfpack from 1991-95. “In New York, if you go out of the house, you’re going to probably bump into someone you know. But here in LA, everyone is spread out. And everyone is ‘trying to make it.’”
But Goines, whom we profiled in the fall issue of NC State magazine, is currently working on a project he hopes will be his biggest break to date. He rented out a big venue in LA in summer 2011 and enlisted the help of two comedians, Guy Torry and Chris Spencer. Goines wrote some sketches, and the three put together Eddie Goines & Friends Present: The Time Is NOW.
“It’s kind of like one of those HBO specials,” Goines says. “It’s more of a variety show. We have some comedy. We have some music. It’s pure entertainment.”
Goines at NC State. Photo courtesy of NC State Athletics.
The project, Goines hopes, will make its way to television or the Internet via something like HULU in the next couple of months.
He says the project symbolizes that, in Hollywood, you have to create your own opportunities.
“It’s you stepping out on your own,” he says. “You’re trying to take your career and essentially your life in your own hands. Owen and Luke Wilson did it with their careers. Billy Bob Thornton did it. Tyler Perry.
“It’s not happening in a conventional way, so you get behind the wheel and try to drive it to the top.”
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