SUNY Adirondack offers conversation with alum Scott Valentine

QUEENSBURY, New York (Oct. 30, 2024) — An attempted coup in Guam led Scott Valentine to enroll at SUNY Adirondack, where the “Family Ties” star discovered his love of theater. 

After working at The Saratogian newspaper in high school, Valentine’s boss suggested he move to Guam to be sports editor of another Gannett-owned publication.

“Sure, I’ll go to Guam,” Valentine remembered saying. “So I didn’t apply to any colleges.”

Then, news broke that there was political unrest in the U.S. territory in the western Pacific Ocean. “I said, ‘The heck with it, I’m not going there to be shot by guerrillas; I guess I’ll go to college,’” he said.

He enrolled in SUNY Adirondack’s radio broadcast program. “I had a rousing 1.8 GPA after my first semester,” he said. “Having that freedom, growing up in Saratoga, making the short drive from my parents’ house to campus, it seemed like the other side of the continent with the freedom it afforded me.”

After his second semester and what he describes as “dalliances with marijuana and the company of women,” he had a 1.32 GPA. When someone told him there were auditions for a play, he said, “That could be interesting.”

That was the start of a four decades-long career that brought Valentine around the world and on to our TV and movie screens. 

At 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 13, Valentine will talk about how his time on the SUNY Adirondack stage inspired his success in entertainment and business. The talk, facilitated by SUNY Adirondack adjunct instructor Bob Bullock, is free and open to the public, and will be held in Scoville Auditorium at the college’s Queensbury campus.

“In doing the play, I had to do research to understand the character and what the play was about,” Valentine said. “And I realized, ‘I can apply this to my political science class and to my literature class and to my humanities class’; I used all the same information and all of a sudden, my grades started going up.”

After landing a role in “Godspell” — a production that filled the college’s theater every night of its two-week run — Valentine realized he might be on to something.

“That really gave me the bug,” he said. “From that, I thought, ‘What could make this better? I’m getting good grades and getting lots of dates. Money? Making money could make this better!’”

Valentine auditioned at fine arts colleges and decided on American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. There, he honed his craft and discovered another side to theater.

“I was exposed to the cattiness and backstabbing and competitiveness of the industry,” he said. “I remember talking to a teacher, saying ‘This doesn’t feel like camaraderie; we have gone from camaraderie to I’m competing with an African American woman and it doesn’t seem right, we shouldn’t be in competition.’”

But the professor said every show is in competition for viewers. 

“And it hit me: ‘Oh, OK, I get it. As much as this play may be about that, that play is going to compete for the same audience and dollar,’” he said. “It was one of those things you look back on in life and say, ‘I really wish I understood the magnitude of that.’”

Valentine studied at the Actors Studio and worked as a cook at a hotel. He was deciding between a role on a soap opera and in a movie when, while biking to his agent’s office, he was struck by a truck. “It killed me,” he said. “They brought me back to life; but it crushed my pelvis, left hip, my femur, I was paralyzed from the waist down.”

After a three-year recovery, he moved to Los Angeles in 1984, hoping to distance himself from the accident and secure a role in a movie. 

“My agent had me going out on auditions almost every day, sometimes two or three a day; there were weeks when I would go on 20 auditions,” he marveled. “I didn’t realize how lucky I was at that age.”

Less than a year after arriving, he landed what was meant to be a one-episode part, playing Nick, the love interest of Mallory Keaton, on “Family Ties.”

“That was another big life-changer,” Valentine said. “I didn’t know ‘Family Ties’ when I auditioned, but I knew I needed to become bankable.”

The day after the episode aired, he went to an electronics store to buy cables for his stereo speakers and people in the store recognized him. When he went to breakfast later that morning, he was inundated.

“I had no clue of the power of TV and what it could do,” he said.

Valentine rode the high of the four-year role that made him a household name. But afterward, when few jobs materialized, he realized he was going to have to branch out beyond acting.

“Every business at its core is the same: You have to make something, sell it to somebody and get a return on it to subsist,” he explained. “There are economic principles you have to abide by whether you’re making computers or muffins.”

He started producing, then investment banking, and has built a career that includes development, production and distribution of film, television and streaming content, development and production for major studios, as well as producer, executive producer and owner of his own production company.

“It has been a ride,” he said. “And it all started at Adirondack Community College.”