Having transitioned from the basketball court to the big screen, Brian Jesiolowski finds himself at a ‘weird crossroads’

Brian Jesiolowski has worked as an actor for over a decade now, and adding the phrase “on and off” to his job description seems superfluous.

Of course it’s on and off. Of course there are constant ups and downs, constant periods of self-examination and self-doubt, all of it a big cocktail that can leave one woozy, questioning where you’re going and how you might get there.

The former Lebanon Catholic basketball star has always been an adventurous spirit. Besides acting, he’s done some standup comedy since moving to Los Angeles in 2014. And in a past life he walked on at St. Joseph’s University, finding himself part of a Jameer Nelson-led joyride to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight his senior year (2003-04).

So daring is in Jesiolowski’s DNA. Risk-taking is, to him, de rigueur. It’s just that he finds himself “at a weird crossroads” right now, as he said in a recent phone interview. 

“Every day,” he said, “I think about trying to do something extraordinary that is not just sitting in an office, that is not just making money – trying to build something, trying to create something, trying to do something that’s going to entertain people or bring people joy or make people feel something. And every day it seems to slip away a little more and more.”

He’s 43 now. About a year ago he took a job in the medical-device industry, in which he also worked while living near Philadelphia out of college. (His SJU degree is in pharmaceutical marketing.) Gotta pay the bills. Gotta have a steady gig to fall back on.

Still, the acting bug hovers around him. The profession might not hold quite the allure it once did – as he put it, one can’t help but get “a little jaded” by the uncertainty of it all – but he’s not ready to cast it aside, either.

“Every day I question whether I made the right decision (to embark on this journey),” he said with a laugh. “But every day is a day where everything could change, at the drop of a dime. That’s the beauty of it. I’ve gotta embrace the uncertainty, and have fun with it.”

His brother-in-law, Erik Soulliard, finds it gratifying that Jesiolowski is continually “chasing dragons,” as he put it, but that’s not exactly a surprise, seeing as Soulliard has himself worked as an actor in the past and now runs a Lebanon-based film company, Annubis Productions. In Soulliard’s experience, actors are forever wing-walking, forever working without a net. To flip a phrase from the movie Apollo 13 on its nose cone, failure very much is an option, and you just have to come to grips with that.

But maybe Jesiolowski’s sense of adventure goes beyond even that. His sister Nancy – Erik’s wife and a woman with an acting background herself – suggested that it might have something to do with the fact that he grew up the youngest of four children. (At 49, she is next-oldest on the family depth chart.)

“If you look at that birth order generally, it ends up being like that fourth one has a little bit more of that wanderlust,” she said. “You could definitely say (he’s) adaptable, open to new experiences and trying new things.”

Erik was the one who first propped open the door for Jesiolowski’s acting career, when in 2005 he spotted an ad on a trade website for an unnamed movie that was seeking a basketball player 6-foot-5 or taller who could speak with a Russian accent. While Brian, who stands 6-7, managed just a single field goal in 15 attempts over two collegiate seasons – albeit a spinning lefty scoop shot in the final home game of his senior year that earned him a spot on SportsCenter’s Top 10 – he had been part of a District Three championship team at Lebanon Catholic. (He has also continued to play in leagues and tournaments since moving to southern California.)

And the accent? Not a problem. Such is Jesiolowski’s talent for impressions that a childhood friend took to calling him “Mimic Boy,” a talent he has continued to put on display ever since. Particularly relevant in this case was the fact that he had taken to imitating Russian teammate Alex Sazonov while at St. Joe’s.

So Erik pushed Brian to audition for the part, and, well, he eventually got around to it.

“It’s funny, Brian, he rolls with things,” Nancy said. “There are times in his life when he’s driven and times when he’s not. I think Erik had to poke him a few times to get him to actually submit for it.”

Finally he traveled to New York for the audition. And before he knew it he was in New Orleans as part of the cast for Failure to Launch, a 2006 release starring Bradley Cooper, Matthew McConaughey, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

A year later he appeared in Erik Soulliard’s film The Creek (as did Nancy), and in all he has eight credits on his IMDB page. (There are also two that are listed as being in development, but he doesn’t expect them to ever be released.) Of those eight, five have come since he moved to LA. He has also done some commercial work, but none since appearing in an NBA 2K ad last July. His standup career is also at something of a standstill, though he does host a monthly comedy show at a local bar.

So yeah, a weird crossroads.

“I think the hardest thing is coming to terms sometimes with the fact that maybe I didn’t have what it takes,” he said. “Maybe I didn’t work hard enough. And while I understand that a lot of this industry is luck, you can’t control a lot of your destiny in this. There’s always that feeling of, what if I did this differently? What if I did that differently? Or what is it about me that couldn’t get to that next level? That’s the daily mental struggle that I deal with.”

Lately his self-examination has also been literal. Since the pandemic actors have increasingly been asked to audition not in person but by self-taping – i.e., taking prompts from casting agencies and turning them into smartphone videos ranging in length from 90 seconds to two minutes. The advantages to that are the hopefuls can re-tape or edit their work. And in the case of Jesiolowski and others living in Southern California, they don’t have to fight the notorious freeway traffic to get to an audition.

But there are also very clear disadvantages, the most obvious one being that candidates do not receive immediate feedback.

“It’s like you’re in a void,” he said. 

He noted that with an in-person audition, those doing the evaluations “can feel your energy. They can see your presence. You can make them laugh. You can engage in a little small talk. You can maybe ask a question of how you want some direction.”

With self-taping, there are no such interactions, and everything is open to interpretation. One time, he said, the instructions called upon him to act like he was crawling along a beach, then removing his sunglasses and placing them on a chair – without any props.

“It’s so ridiculous,” he said. “I can’t even begin to think how many different auditions I’ve done where I’m like, how am I even gonna do this?”

The other frustration is that there are seldom notes for those who don’t get the part. The casting agencies simply go radio silent after making their decisions, and the actors are left to scour for other opportunities.

It was suggested to Jesiolowski that the process is not unlike that in athletics: You meet with rejection, and just crank it up again. Next play, right?

Wrong.

“In sports,” he said, “at least there’s a roadmap: If you’re in the gym for this many hours, if you work hard, if you do this, you’ll see results. There are no guarantees in this industry. I can go to so many classes. I could go to so many open mikes, go to so many comedy shows, go to so many auditions, but a lot of it is out of your hands.”

Back in simpler times, he was always in the gym. While Nancy was drawn to the stage – a Northern Lebanon graduate, she minored in theater at Kutztown University – Brian’s sole focus was hoops. Hence his success at Lebanon Catholic, the demise of which he called “pretty sad,” and his desire to walk on at SJU.

Things didn’t work out his first two years on Hawk Hill, but by his third he had ingratiated himself with the scholarship players on the team. He lived in the same dorm with many of them, played pickup with them. He had also come to understand just how rigorous tryouts were, and finally, as a junior – i.e., 2002-03 – he stuck.

St. Joe’s was good that year, elite the following one. Led by Nelson and another NBA-bound guard, Delonte West, the Hawks swept their first 27 games and were ranked No. 1 in the country. Then they advanced to the East Regional Finals, losing in the closing seconds to Oklahoma State.

As with many ex-players, Jesiolowski treasures the relationships he built back then, many of which survive to this day. In fact, he compared the vibe of that group to that of his high school teams.

“We all really had fun playing, and had fun playing with each other, on and off the court,” he said. “We all really got along. Both of these teams, we used to make fun of each other, but in a great way – like, that big-brother way, where you make fun of each other, but if anybody else stepped up to you, it was over for them. We had each other’s backs to no end.”

Particularly notable was his friendship with West, a street-tough kid from Greenbelt, Maryland. The two of them would cruise around Philadelphia in Jesiolowski’s Cutlass, the ultimate odd couple. West, as creative as he was cagey, replaced the vehicle’s radio with a CD player. They met odd characters, had their share of laughs, crafted a thousand stories.

One time Jesiolowski crossed his fingers and lent his friend $1,000, all the while wondering if he would ever be repaid. But after the Celtics took West late in the first round of the 2004 draft, he settled up … with $250 in interest.

Sadly, things went sideways for West after that. In 2008 he announced he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. By 2012 his NBA run was over, and the $16 million in salary he had earned over eight seasons was reportedly gone. Since then there have been reports of him living on the street, running afoul of law enforcement and checking in and out of rehab facilities. Others, notably former St. Joe’s coach Phil Martelli and former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, have tried to help, to no avail.

An October 2023 report by Dana O’Neil of The Athletic indicated West was living outside a 7-11 in Alexandria, Virginia. It’s unclear where he might be now. Jesiolowski said he hasn’t heard from him, and when he talked to Martelli a few months back, his old coach hadn’t, either. 

“I miss that dude,” Jesiolowski said. “I hope he’s all right. I know he’s going through it.”

He struggles to find the right words, struggles to understand. He talks about West going to a rehab facility in Florida at one point – how he stayed for a while, “but it just didn’t take.” And Jesiolowski wrestles with the vagaries of mental health, calling it “a crazy thing.”

“It’s hard to blame anybody,” he said. “It’s nobody’s fault, really.”

His own difficulties pale by comparison, but are no less real. He wants meaning and purpose, wants to stay in touch with his creative side. But he’s also well aware of life’s everyday realities.

“I think as you get older you kind of have to make a decision: Is this sustainable? Can I continue to live like this?” he said. “As fun as it is, when you still have $30,000 in school loans and $15,000 in credit-card debt, and you’re my age and still single and looking for a wife, how do you reconcile that?”

Maybe, he said, he will always be an actor. Maybe he can act on the side, if for no other reason than to appeal to his sense of adventure. Sure, there will always be self-examination and self-doubt. Failure will always be an option. That’s just part of the equation, part of what makes the profession what it is. What else could push Jesiolowski’s buttons to such a degree? What else could make him feel so complete, so vital, so alive?

So he stands at that crossroads, glancing this way and that. Yes, the well-worn path holds great allure. But he also knows (as Robert Frost did) that the road less traveled can make all the difference. Which is why it’s so very difficult to change course, so very difficult to turn away.