Robert L. Butler Jr.

Robert L Butler Jr is an award winning actor, writer, editor, producer and director. He is originally from Washington D.C. An avid Bruce Lee fan, has been fascinated with film as a young kid, growing up watching horror movies and episodes of The Twilight Zone ,really intrigued his interest in story telling. Also watching Bruce Lee on screen gave him the inspiration to be an actor, seeing a minority on the screen at a young age in the lead role ,was inspiring to him. but his dreams would have to wait ,a year after he graduated high school he would enlist in the United States Marines. Serving 20 years from July 1984-Aug 2004, retiring after reaching the rank of SSgt, He also severed in The Gulf War. After retiring, he relocated to Seattle Washington to embark on his second career. While doing security, for a few years, he felt as though he was just existing and not really living, That is when something inside him said "Hey, didn't you always want to be an actor? So with that in mind, he began auditioning for role in the Seattle area ,but there were little to no roles for African American men . Frustrated he began to create short films of his own, 5 comedies, each he wrote, acted, edited and directed. He had fun doing them and gained some followers on social media outlets like ,You tube and Facebook when he posted his videos. Then in 2013 wanting to get better behind the camera and learn more about screenwriting , he enrolled at Seattle Film Institute. He took the filmmaking program, then the acting program, and then the producing program. While in school, he joined a talent agency, got a few gigs in local casino commercials, and was an extra Greys Anatomy and Station 19. But still frustrated because there were still no films being written for African Americans, he decided to write ,act, edit, produce and direct his one feature film. That film would be called The Alliance, which took him 8 months to complete, he financed it himself and has won numerous awards. Most notable is having the screenplay be a finalist at Cannes. he has submitted a treatment for another film called Real Love, that was also a finalist at Cannes. Riding the success of The Alliance, Robert has begun working on a sequel, which he hopes has the same success as the first. All though when he was trying to get roles in films and there were no roles for people of color, Robert's cast of The Alliance was a diverse movie featuring African American, Asian, Samoan, Mexican and Romanian. He feels that is screenplay was a success because there was no mention of any characters race. That way you could read his script and picture who you wanted a certain character to be. But he does not take all the credit for his success, he always thanks his cast and crew. #teamworkmakesthedreamwork.