The way he tells it, there really was never any doubt that Daniel Roebuck would be in the entertainment industry someday. “I knew I was going to be on TV from the time I was six years old,” he says. While childhood musings of fame are often fleeting and abandoned later for more practical pursuits, Roebuck stuck to the plan. Now, more than 50 years later, Roebuck’s resume is a lengthy one, with dozens of notable roles on TV and the big screen under his belt. Lately he’s been busy bolstering his work behind the camera as well, much to the benefit of the film community in his native Lehigh Valley.
Ask Roebuck about his childhood in Bethlehem and he practically gushes: “Could there be a better place to grow up? It was just perfect.” He can easily rattle off a list of his favorite haunts as a youngster. A few are long gone, like “Two Guys” department store. Some are almost gone, like the shuttered-but-still-standing Boyd Theatre (“I smile every time I see the marquee and sign,” Roebuck says). And others are still very much a part of Lehigh Valley life, such as The Pennsylvania Playhouse in Bethlehem.
It’s not surprising that a performer in the making like Roebuck would spend many a Saturday hunkered down in the darkened theaters of the Boyd and other local movie houses, taking in the Disney matinee show or catching whatever blockbuster was doing big business at the moment. As Roebuck recalls it, he wasn’t just watching the films—he was studying them, too. But he knew he needed performance experience as well, so he seized upon whatever opportunities came his way, including what would turn out to be perhaps his debut as a screenwriter and producer. He was a first grader at St. Anne School in Bethlehem when—even though he could not yet read or write—he was inspired by a Popeye cartoon to write a play. He took it to his teacher, Sister Kathleen, who Roebuck says was anything but discouraging: “She said, ‘OK, let’s do your play.’”
Roebuck has a lot of stories about the homegrown support that surrounded him in his early years. His parents got him a cardboard TV for Christmas when he was seven so he could truly be “on” TV, in his own way. His mother helped him secure what may have been his first paying gig as an entertainer at the age of 12 when he was hired as a clown for the Lions All-Star Circus, which performed weekend shows in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. “You’ll never have a better agent than your mother,” Roebuck cracks. During his time in the circus, he struck up a friendship with Neal Fehnel, known locally as Balloons the Clown, who encouraged him to dream bigger. “He’s the one who said, ‘Maybe you can use this thing you love to make money,’’’ Roebuck recalls. And indeed, he was making money—$25 a show: big bucks for a teenager at the time. He also acted in local plays and performed as a magician at parties and special events. “As much as I could be an actor in the Lehigh Valley, I did,” says Roebuck.
But ultimately, Roebuck knew if he was truly going to “make it” in show biz, he had to go to Hollywood. And so, at the tender age of 20, with his then-wife Leslie by his side, he made tracks for the West Coast. That was in February of 1984. He found work as an extra, and by August of that year Roebuck had landed his first lead role in the movie Cavegirl. “It’s a teenage sex comedy,” he says. “But there were no teens, no sex and no comedy.” He doesn’t mind poking a little fun at what turned out to be a forgettable film because it led to him landing representation and a much meatier role: as the deranged Samson in River’s Edge, which also starred Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover and Dennis Hopper. The movie put Roebuck on the map just two short years after he decided to pursue acting full-time. “It doesn’t usually happen that way,” he admits. But that doesn’t mean carving out a career in what’s arguably one of the toughest industries around has been easy. Roebuck attributes a lot of his success to his drive. “I never relaxed,” he says. “I was always working ahead.”
Or, always working—period. A quick glance at his IMDb page yields more than 250 acting roles over the past few decades. Among the highlights: Robert Biggs in The Fugitive and its follow-up, U.S. Marshals, Jay Leno in The Late Shift, Cliff Lewis in Matlock, Dr. Leslie Arzt in Lost and Arnold Walker in The Man in the High Castle. And he’s still at it—he has several projects in the works. But in recent years he’s been spending more time getting comfortable in the director’s chair. “I was always going to [direct],” says Roebuck. “It just took me a while to get there.”
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On set of The Hail Mary, which was filmed at Mary Immaculate Seminary in Northampton.
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On set of The Hail Mary, which was filmed at Mary Immaculate Seminary in Northampton.
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On set of The Hail Mary, which was filmed at Mary Immaculate Seminary in Northampton.
And lucky for the Lehigh Valley, Roebuck decided to return to his old stomping grounds to film his directorial debut. Getting Grace was shot at several locations across the region in 2016. Roebuck followed that up with shoots for Lucky Louie in 2020, and The Hail Mary earlier this year. So why eschew the sound stages of Hollywood for the neighborhoods of Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton and beyond? “It’s gorgeous,” says Roebuck. “And more than the location, is the people. I have an extraordinary group of people who support us in the Valley.
I have people who help us make the movie from the ground up.” Roebuck also uses local actors whenever possible from a talent pool that he says has gone largely untapped. “I can reach into that pool of talent and give opportunity that I never got. I had to go to Hollywood to be a movie star. All Madelyn (Dundon, a Bethlehem native who starred as Grace in Getting Grace) had to do was audition.”
The Lehigh Valley is also home base for Roebuck’s non-profit, A Channel of Peace. Its name comes from the Prayer of St. Francis, and its aim is to produce faith-based, family entertainment. Roebuck attended Catholic school from kindergarten through 12th grade, graduating from Bethlehem Catholic High School in 1981. He says his faith has always been important to him. “It’s one of the things that kept me grounded.”
Roebuck envisions a day when he’ll once again have a permanent address in the Lehigh Valley. For now, he divides his time between Burbank, California, and Tampa, Florida. His now adult children—Grace and Buster, who have collaborated with him in various ways on his Lehigh Valley projects—live in California, and his wife, Tammy, lives in Florida. Not that it really matters where he hangs his hat these days—he’s constantly on the go. “In the last year, I’ve been in that house five weeks,” Roebuck says of his home in California. Even when the cameras are turned off, he’s occupied with various projects. He’s currently working on a book to help actors navigate the industry and find work. And certainly, his years of experience in what he calls the land of make believe make him uniquely qualified for the job. “Anything you learn in college or in an acting class is 1,000 percent wrong,” he says. He also recently finished writing a children’s book that he’s shopping around. And of course, he has any number of ideas for future films percolating in his brain. So, you can bet he’ll be saying “lights, camera, action” again soon. And you can bet he’ll be saying it in the Lehigh Valley. Says Roebuck: “People always say to me, ‘Why do you choose the Lehigh Valley for movies?’ I say, ‘The Lehigh Valley chose me.’”
