Catching Up with Kevin Sorbo

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Actor Kevin Sorbo [2], 53, starred in two popular television shows, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995–1999, 111 60-minute episodes) and the sci-fi series Gene Rodenberry’s Andromeda (2000–2005, 110 60-minute episodes). He starred as Hercules in the first and Captain Dylan Hunt in the second.

In Hollywood, where actors can’t afford to publicly express independent, nonconformist views without jeopardizing their livelihoods, Sorbo more or less exemplifies implicit whiteness; he is a departure from the norm. Consistent with this, his family is also white.

Sorbo began his career as a model in print and TV ads in the early 1980s. By the second half of the decade and the early ’90s he was appearing in guest spots on various television programs.

He was considered for the role of Superman in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which ultimately went to quarter-Japanese actor Dean Cain, and was a finalist for the part of Agent Mulder in The X Files that went to (half) Jewish actor David Duchovny.

In 1994 Sorbo shot to fame as Hercules in five made-for-TV films beginning with Hercules and the Amazon Women. The movies served as pilots for the subsequent television series.

During Hercules‘ run he starred in a theatrical film based on Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard [3]‘s character Kull the Conqueror (1997).

In terms of themes, subject matter and interracialism, Kevin Sorbo’s film and TV work is no doubt conventionally liberal and multiracialist.

“It’s tough enough to get a job, whether it’s in Hollywood or on TV, let alone the politics . . .” he said in one interview.

He worked as an actor full-time from 1995–2005 (encompassing his two popular television series), noting that many TV shows don’t last for five episodes, much less five years.

Sorbo probably doesn’t turn down too many parts; one movie typecast him as a white serial killer.

The actor is also associated with a charity called A World Fit For Kids! which targets “at risk” (non-white) youth.

Disabling Stroke

In 1997, at the height of his Hercules fame, Sorbo, then 38, suffered a series of three strokes after an aneurism (the ballooning of an artery) near his shoulder. The health crisis left him partially blind and, for a while, incapacitated.

As an action star Sorbo had been extremely fit and athletic. In fact, the first sign of trouble appeared when he was working out at the gym.

The odds against such a thing happening to someone so physically fit at his age were extremely remote.

Yet his arduous recovery took nearly three years. Even so, he returned to the set of Hercules, struggling to play the world’s strongest man while sometimes so frail that he could hardly walk.

In the last two seasons of the program scripts were rewritten, his screen time was limited, more guest stars were brought in, and stunt doubles were hired to accommodate his incapacity.

Since appearances are everything in Hollywood, Sorbo hid the full extent of his condition from the press until 2011. He told the story of his ordeal in his memoir True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal—and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life (2011).

Minnesota Background

One of five children, Sorbo was born in 1958 in Mound, Minnesota, a Minneapolis suburb, to a high school math and biology teacher and a nurse. His Amazon.com profile [4] asserts that he is “100% Norwegian and proud of his Viking heritage!”

Today an avid golfer, Sorbo and his brothers played for free on a course overlooking Lake Minnetonka where they worked while growing up. In high school he played hockey, baseball, and football. Baseball was the sport he was best at, but football the one he most enjoyed.

Cultural Views

Sorbo harbors mildly conservative, politically incorrect views—unusual for Hollywood, where Leftism is eternally in fashion.

On a conservative radio program he joked that the United States was the only country in the world you don’t need papers to get into. His Republican host quickly steered him away from that topic. Despite the host’s rah-rah contention that America is “the greatest country on earth,” Sorbo allowed that if he has to “live in a socialist country” he’d prefer New Zealand (where Hercules had been filmed).

Media Matters, a Left-wing pro-censorship group funded by multi-billionaire Jewish globalist George Soros and others, highlights on its website [5] a horrible “racist” comment Sorbo made on the Fox News program Hannity in October 2011. (Ah, our god-like, omnipresent monitors!)

Admittedly, the supposedly abhorrent remark doesn’t shiver my timbers, but then, I’m not anti-white!

Raised a Lutheran, Sorbo later attended a nondenominational church. A Christian website states [6]:

As he takes on Christian films, such as What if . . . (2008) and Soul Surfer (2011) while also leaving room for secular films, his only wish is to change the face of Hollywood as we know it.

His personal worry is, what will the public consider normal when most things portrayed tell us that our innate moral views might probably be wrong.

“Hollywood likes to put out their own message a lot of times, and that message isn’t the best one for everyone,” he noted. “If you keep saying two plus two equals five over and over again, then that is what people are going to think. Maybe it does equal five if we keep changing the definition of what’s normal and what’s right and what’s wrong.”

Sorbo’s concern also carries over to how much Christianity is being bullied by the press over and over again. He lamented, “Christianity takes this beating that I really don’t understand and yet you can’t say anything negative about the Muslims because that’s horrible, you can’t say anything negative about other faiths.”

“Hollywood is still in the business of show business,” he said. “If we hand them a message loud enough and clear enough and if people start supporting movies like these, movies that have a good message, movies that the whole family can go to that aren’t cheesy, that aren’t cheap looking, that have a good story, good acting, good writing, good directors and good cinematography, then these are the movies they need to support.”

He hosted the DVD documentary The 12 Biggest Lies (2010) 90 min. [1 min. trailer [7]].

Sorbo’s basic instincts seem sound. He’s essentially a cultural conservative dissatisfied with the cramped, barbed wire enclosure whites are currently confined to.

Family Man

The actor appears to be a good family man. (A personal photo of daughter Octavia fast asleep with a flyswatter in her hand [8] is humorously captioned “Swatting flies can be so exhausting . . .”)

Sorbo’s wife is Pittsburgh-born Sandra “Sam” Jenkins, a former Ford model and actress he met on the set of Hercules (he married her character, Serena, but she died). Engaged to Sorbo before his stroke (she was the one who rushed him to the hospital after his speech became slurred and he could barely walk), she married him after it—long before his full return to health.

He was forced to rely upon her during his agonizingly slow recovery. “I’d remind him of how he was improving, even if it was in a small way,” she said. “I always had that optimism, which drove him a little crazy.”

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Kevin & Sam Sorbo with children (from left) Braedon, Octavia, & Shane

At age 45, her childbearing years are over [10], but the couple has three children. (Son Shane’s middle name is Norwegian: Haaken.)

Oldest son Braedon, 10, was born when Sorbo was 43 and Sam 35; last child Octavia, 6, when Kevin was 47 and Sam 39.

Another hint of underlying political incorrectness: the kids are home schooled by their parents.

“Sam does most of the work,” Sorbo says. “But I’m the one who makes sure they get their physical activities. They’re very active with other kids playing football, basketball and taking karate four times a week.”