C. Thomas (Tommy) Howell is known for portraying Ponyboy in the teen coming-of-age epic The Outsiders, Officer Bill “Dewey” Dudek in the TNT drama series Southland and as the sadistic serial killer, the Reaper, on CBS’s Criminal Minds. He also appeared in Red Dawn, Grandview: U.S.A., The Land That Time Forgot, The Amazing Spider-Man and LBJ.

Howell is starring in the upcoming Netflix action dramedy series Obliterated from the creators of Cobra Kai. He made his musical debut with his first single “Rose Hill,” which dropped on September 16, 2022. Going back to his cowboy roots, Howell has written several more original songs, and the album called American Storyteller will be released February 3, 2023.

In a new interview with Smashing Interviews Magazine, Howell details how lunch with Rutger Hauer inspired his hellish portrayal as one of Criminal Minds most terrifying serial killers.

Smashing Interviews Magazine: The Reaper (George Foyet) is ranked (by TV Insider) as the third most horrifying major UnSub on Criminal Minds.

C. Thomas Howell: I love that there are references to the Reaper all the time. I know that’s been a big part of the show over the years, and there’s something I just absolutely love about that! But at the same time, I love hearing people say, “My God, how did Ponyboy turn into the Reaper?” That’s the great thing about acting. For me, I really embraced that chameleon aspect of not wanting to be the same in every role, though I feel the most famous actors are those Clint Eastwood types that kind of play the same guy over and over. If you need to sell yourself like that, that’s the way to go because it makes life a lot easier.

It’s tough when you want to become something different every single time, and you’ve got to do that hard work to make that change. That’s what I found when I became a character actor. I did a movie called The Hitcher when I was 17 years old with an actor called Rutger Hauer. Rutger was an amazing actor at the time. He basically had the monopoly on all the villains throughout Hollywood, and he was the best bad guy ever whether it was Blade Runner or Soldier of Orange or Nighthawks or whatever.

We were all intimidated as hell by Rutger, and he really isolated himself away from everybody else and never really joined anybody in terms of a crew or a cast aspect. It wasn’t a free-for-all, let’s all eat together and have a good time. It was an “every man for himself” type of a feeling, but I think that was created intentionally because that was the type of film we were making.

One day, Rutger invited me into his trailer for lunch, and we sat there in stone silence for about 15 minutes as he was smoking a cigarette. Out of sheer terror, I mustered up a little bit of small talk and said, “Mr. Hauer, everybody says you’re just the best bad guy ever. What’s your secret to playing bad guys?” He picked the tobacco out of his teeth, and he hissed in that Dutch accent, “I don’t play bad guys.” Man, that put the fear of God into me, and I gathered up my tray and exited that trailer quicker than you can imagine. That rattled around my damn head for years and years.

I was cast 20-some-odd later in the role of George Foyet in Criminal Minds after auditioning for it. I started thinking about Rutger Hauer and my meeting with him and what made this character so special. It finally hit me. George found a way to express his humanity by not being a freaky psychopath but being a very grounded, artistic human with feelings that was behaving as such a sociopath, it brought the fear of God into everybody. If you have a bad guy thinking, “It’s just no way I’m going to be killed,” that behavior and that sensibility just makes me immediately dislike whatever I’m watching.

I was able to understand what Rutger meant when I embraced this role of George Foyet partly because of the way it was written. I’m introduced as a victim of the Reaper, which led to a very different approach to this character than if he had started out stabbing somebody as the bad guy. I was playing a weak, scared and fearful victim who had been stabbed 67 times. So Foyet was hiding in plain sight. But what it did to me psychologically is it allowed me to find the humanity in that character and immediately made me understand what Rutger Hauer has always done in his work. When you’re playing a bad guy that’s a larger than life character doing evil things, if you can find a way to be grounded and bring out the humanity of that character and not disassociate from your surroundings and not act like you’re invincible, there’s a real profound effect on the audience.

People come up to me and say, “Oh, my God, you’re so crazy and insane in Criminal Minds!” I said, “You’d better watch that again because he’s pretty grounded. He’s pretty not crazy. He’s pretty together. That’s what makes him scary.” That’s what Rutger meant. He wasn’t running around screaming, covered in blood with a chainsaw. He might have some sweat on his forehead and give you a smile or a twinkle in his eye before he clawed your eyeball out, and there was something holy crap scary about all of that. But it took me 20-some-odd years to really understand what he meant, and it took that long for somebody to give me a role like that.

Smashing Interviews Magazine: An unforgettable role and a great story, Tommy! Good luck with the music!

C. Thomas Howell: Thank you. God bless. I appreciate you!

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About the authors:

Marc Parker is an American journalist, author, artist, a photographer and a computer scientist. He is the founder/publisher/editor-in-chief of Smashing Interviews Magazine. Marc Parker's social media: Twitter Facebook

Melissa Benefield Parker is an American journalist and author. She is the founder/publisher of Smashing Interviews Magazine. Melissa Benefield Parker's social media: Twitter Facebook