Actor Dean Cates is creating a “buzz” in Hollywood

DAILY NEWS

AP- New Talent, MN

Pursuing a business major with the intention of following in his father’s insurance footsteps, Dean Cates received an epiphany early on a tender Minnesota spring morning. After delivering a riveting pitch involving the legal aspects of developing a duct-tape clothing line, his business law professor who also happened to be a CPA and priest pulled him aside telling him simply,

“Dean you will never make it in the rigid, unimaginative, and humorless corporate world.”

Sadly Cates had no choice but to agree. To disregard the advice of a CPA/Lawyer/Priest could be considered spendthrift, ill advised and perhaps even sinful.

Ever active in theatre and possessing an “absurd” obsession for film, the only alternative for him was to disappoint his entire family. His father Mark Cates had this to say regarding his boy’s new career path,

“Son, there’s a lot of weirdoes in L.A., not to mention gays. You’re not gay... are you?”

The rural, primarily white and often small-minded, farming community of Cates’s birth seemed to share the sentiments of his father. Chris Wright a childhood friend of Cates’s currently serving 10 to 15 for cooking meth had this to say regarding his interests in films and acting,

“The dude was obsessed. We would all be going to a kegger out in old man Johnson’s cornfield, and Dean would rather stay up late watching old films on AMC always muttering somthin to himself about structure and behavior... it was absurd.”

Since arriving in LA Cates has been honing his craft through continuous studies at Playhouse West under the Meisner based tutelage of Robert Carnegie, Mark Pellegrino, and Tracy Aziz. He has also been gaining invaluable set experience by working on TV shows such as the CBS/Bruckheimer show Close to Home where he had a guest-starring role as a murderous embezzler. In the film world Cates played the lead role of a 26 year-old Ohio state senator opposite Ed O’Neill in the film Steel Valley. 

As for the future Cates’s prospects look great. He just finished principle photography on a mockumentary surrounding the secret lives of life coaches as well as a role in a pilot for a new web series, a get out the vote PSA, and several projects of his own. In response to the buzz he had this to say,

      “Yeah, I’m excited... sure it may only be one bee, but the swarm is close on its         heels.”