Louie Cowan

Louie Cowan was born in Cape Town, South Africa where his dream was to make movies in America. His first foray into professional theatre was as Donalbain in Shakespeare's Macbeth, when he was just 16 years old. He followed that up with many roles in musical theater, playing Joseph in the Cape Town production of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat", and Rolf in "The Sound of Music". He launched his show business career in earnest after studying at the prestigious American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. After working as a production singer on international cruise ships and for Spirit Cruise Lines on Lake Michigan in Chicago, Louie settled in Columbus, where he has performed in numerous commercials, most notably for Maker's Mark, Hollywood Casinos, Liebert Cooling Systems and Ohio Health, and in leading roles in independent films. Since 2001 Louie has produced & directed a number of films of his own, including, "Safe House", "Turkey Day", "A Cold Blood", the first Columbus-based sitcom web series,"Two Doors Down", and "Bloodwood Forest". Louie is also a published author in the book "Should I Stay or Should I Go", chronicling his journey to emigrate to America . His film "A Cold Blood" has been shown at the world renown "Wexner Center for the Arts" and "Turkey Day" was awarded Best Film at the Wilmington Delaware International Film Festival. As an actor, he has played numerous lead roles - in feature films such as "Dark Fate", "The Courier", "Horrors of War" & "Wicked Business", and appeared alongside Jon Voight and James Caan in "JL Ranch". He was nominated twice for the equivalent of the Tony Award in South Africa, called the Vita Award, and has received the Best Actor Award for his work in the 48 Hour Film Challenge 2014 in Columbus Ohio. Challenging points in his career so far have been 5 months of living in a youth homeless shelter in New York City in 1989, and an incident that he could never forget ... when he was performing his personal cabaret on the "Achille Lauro" cruise ship and it caught on fire and sank 3 days off the coast of Somalia! (True to his mantra of turning lemons into lemonade, he fortunately captured the entire event on video and was able to sell the footage to ITN who displayed in on CNN) High points have been directing his first short film "Safe House", winning the Cape Times Best Actor in a Musical Award in 1989, the launch of Two Doors Down - the web series, and the birth of his son in 2001.