Former electrical engineer turned actor poses as long lost father.

January 15, 2005 - After 30 years in the corporate world, Ed Gillow is finally realizing his life's dream.

Last week, the former electrical engineer and corporate manager appeared on a new Fox reality special, "Who's Your Daddy?"

Fox aired the tear-soaked show reuniting a woman with a former Marine and his high school girlfriend who gave her up for adoption about 30 years ago.

"Thank you for having me!," T.J. Myers gushed between sobs at the end of the show. She earned $100,000 for identifying her birth father from among seven impostors.

Gillow, 56, who has been breaking into Hollywood for the last four years, was cast as one of those seven.

His own experiences – growing up without his father – gave a him a special perspective.

The show, since airing, has drawn protests from adoption advocates who were outraged that the adoptive parents were only briefly mentioned. The National Council for Adoption pleaded with Fox's 182 affiliates not to air it. Only one TV station, in North Carolina, heeded their request and aired an adoption special during the same time slot.

At age 7, Gillow's parents divorced and he didn't see his father for 20 years. During a reunion, both he and his father realized life between them would never be close.

"The disappointment came when I saw him," Gillow said. "I thought, ‘I should be feeling something,' but I didn't. I spent four great days with him and his new family. When he dropped me off at the airport, he said, ‘we've had separate lives, let's keep it like that.' "

Gillow, who had been working in engineering abroad, wasn't shocked by his father's comment.

"The Far East had matured me. I realized the world was not just about me," he said. "I know it wasn't easy for him to say that but it was necessary and I just accepted it."

Gillow first saw the reality show's breakdown in a trade paper this summer; it called for middle-aged men. He submitted for it, got a call from the casting people and was selected as one of the possible fathers. Gillow was given a dossier of the "real" father's background, Myers' background and events of the adoption.

Although Myers later correctly identified her birth father, Gillow was one of three she seriously considered.

"Even though I didn't show that much emotion, I was really trying to go with what the girl was feeling," he said. "Her emotion was so strong. When I looked at her face I could feel it."

Gillow, the real father and the six other men were seated around tables in a mansion. Myers interviewed each of them with specific questions Fox had prepared for her.

"I tried to make a connection with her," Gillow said. "I could get her attention. I'd look into her eye and try to be really warm."

No one in the cast knew who the actual father was until the show aired last week.

"He was really nervous and emotional," Gillow said of the man who was eventually identified. "Even though we were all acting, he was the most real. As I watched the show, it made sense that he was the guy."

Being on reality TV has given Gillow a different perspective on acting.

"It really makes you reach," he said. "It's acting but it's being open to what's around you."

At an early age, Gillow recognized his passion to act.

"I watched ‘Route 66' religiously as a kid in the 1960s," he said. "That show made me want to become an actor. I was drawn to the drama and the characters were believable."

But it would be almost four decades before Gillow got his chance.

As an electrical engineer and director of engineering for Texas Instruments, Rockwell International and Fiskars Electrical Corporation, Gillow got a chance to be creative and to interact with people. He learned a lot of things in life that now help him act.

"As an engineer, you're designing stuff and you're working with people," he said. "Acting is about people. It's not about you, it's about the person across from you."
Working as an extra, Gillow realized his calling was for something more.

He's shooting an independent film, "Breaking Vegas," which the History Channel plans to air this spring. He hopes this will be his big break.

"Each time I was on the set, they'd put me in with a principal and they'd want to give me lines," he said. "It made me think God is telling me something. I'm not going to be unknown all my life."

Erika I. Ritchie
Laguna News-Post