The walls on both floors of an old Camden row house were given a fresh coat of white paint, so Anna Hicks, the mother of a large family that wasn’t done growing, issued a warning to her little ones.
This was circa 1962, a time when Anna had three children in grade school, one in diapers and a truck-driver husband who kept moving in and out.
It also was a time when common punishment for an “or else” was a spanking, and Anna, who had a tough father growing up on a farm near Montgomery, Ala., believed in using a switch to teach right from wrong.
Well, kids will be kids, and Anna wasn’t happy the day she noticed a star had been scribbled onto a second-floor hallway wall near the stairs. The guilty party used a pencil, then traced over the star again and again to make it distinct.
With switch in hand and her three children out of diapers in front of her, Anna demanded a confession. When no one spoke up, she started with the oldest. Albert cried and pleaded that he was innocent during his licking. Then Jackie, the only girl, did the same.
Thinking back all those years, Anna Hicks, 75, and still living in Pennsauken, let out a laugh. Her son, Dwight, who moved from Camden to Pennsauken in the fourth grade, lived up to his prediction.
Dwight Hicks, 56, did it as a young man by becoming a four-time Pro Bowl defensive back and two-time Super Bowl champion for the Joe Montana-era San Francisco 49ers, and now, post-football, he’s doing it again as an actor.
Ironically, the football star-turned-movie star played FBI Agent Star in one of first pictures, 1996 action movie “The Rock.”
Hicks isn’t stealing parts from the likes of Bruce Willis, Sean Connery or Ben Affleck, but he’s landed small roles in movies with all three while appearing in many other show-business projects — independent films, plays, television series, commercials.
“I have a passion for the arts I never knew I had,” said Hicks, a 1974 Pennsauken High School graduate. “That was very important to me to find another passion in my life, football being the first.”
Because he’d never become filthy rich playing defensive back — “I was grossly underpaid,” he says — Hicks needed a second career after retiring from football in 1986 following seven NFL seasons in San Francisco and one in Indianapolis.
Single with two daughters at the time, Hicks remained in the Bay Area hoping to use his ties to the 49ers for opportunities. He landed a good job in sales, but hated it and quit. For almost a decade, he did a lot of motivational speaking to pay bills, and for two football seasons, held his first job in television co-anchoring a 49ers’ post-game show for San Francisco’s FOX affiliate.
All the while, Hicks thought back to one of his Pro Bowl trips to Hawaii when he did a Public Service Announcement. He never forgot finishing his lines and hearing an impressed director say: “Have you done this before? Man, you can make a lot of money reading a script.”
Years later, Hicks decided in 1995 to seek out a San Francisco-based talent agent who maybe could get him work doing television commercials. He ended up being taken in by Stars, the Agency, founded and run by a woman named Lynn Claxon.
“I told my agent I’d like to do commercials, then I opened my big mouth and said, ‘If any films come up, I’d like to audition,'” Hicks said. “She says, ‘Oh, you’re an actor.’ I said, ‘No, I just feel like I have the confidence to do it.”’
Claxon normally would have laughed off Hicks’ ambitious thoughts, but she noticed right away that he appeared different from other former professional athletes she’d encountered. She liked that he was soft-spoken, well-spoken and professional. And even though he had no acting experience, she guessed Hicks might be able to charm his way into small television or movie roles, then over time, possibly work his way into earning better parts.
“A lot of people say, ‘I want to be an actor,’” Hicks said. “They want to go to Hollywood or New York and be discovered, but there hardly is any overnight success. It takes years to hone that skill.”
Incredibly, just a week after finding an agent, Hicks was on his way to his first audition, trying out for a role in a film loaded with Hollywood megastars. “Jack” was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starred Robin Williams and co-starred Bill Cosby, Fran Drescher and Diane Lane.
The part Hicks went for was one line in one scene — a bartender correcting the way Williams’ character, Jack, pronounced “maraschino” cherry. It was just one line, but Hicks made an impression.
Coppola gave Hicks the part, then during filming switched him to a bigger one in which he played a high school principal.
Excited to see himself in his first movie, Hicks went to a theater alone on opening night ... then was crushed after discovering the editing process left his character seen but not heard.
No matter, the entire process was a learning experience because Hicks hung around the set for hours closely watching how a bunch of seasoned pros worked.
“I didn’t go back to my trailer,” Hicks said. “I just stayed and watched. Everything fascinated me and I was learning.”
Following “Jack,” Hicks was sent to more auditions and he kept getting parts. He played an FBI agent in “Armageddon” and a bouncer “In the Mix.” He made television appearances on “How I Met Your Mother,” “Nash Bridges,” “The Practice,” “The X-Files” and “ER,” among others.
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