James Dowling(VI)
- Actor
Hailing from the Bushrod neighborhood of North Oakland, CA, James Dowling was raised by his mother in a small cottage in a neighborhood rich with cultural and socioeconomic diversity. Being of Irish and black descent himself, he credits hearing mostly jazz in the home and growing up around Ethiopian, Latino, Jewish and Asian cultures with giving him a "great ear for the beautifully various ways in which we humans communicate".
Drawn to hip-hop as a child, as were a majority of the kids in Oakland and Berkeley in the 80's and 90's, James was a graffiti artist and MC rather than a trained actor. He got his first taste of any formal training while attending the University of California at Santa Cruz in the late 90's, although MCing was still his passion at this time. He continued to develop accents and caricatures of personalities that he grew up around, resulting in a desire to focus more on self-produced themes rather than traditional auditioned roles.
From school, he moved to Hollywood at the age of 22 to explore and experience the entertainment culture, but, deciding it wasn't for him, returned to his old neighborhood. He actively wrote and conceived small sketches, never intending to turn them into professional productions.
At the age of 40, he was tapped by an old high school friend to play a bit part in a feature called The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a beautiful poem of a film about gentrification, love, loss and home. Ironically, James was cast as Tech Bro, an undesirably annoying gentrifier. In his private life, he lives in the house he grew up in, where so many years ago he was surrounded by nothing but working families like his. Today, it is the hottest rental market in the country and has been overrun by those who can afford housing rates higher than some parts of Manhattan. He longs for the days when "working-class people of all creeds dominated my beautiful, artistic, intelligent, diverse city."