Cory Roberts- People You Should Know

People You Should Know, People You Should Know/Pg 2 — By Buddy Sampson on December 3, 2016 at 5:07 pm

By Buddy Sampson

Larger Than Life, But Bigger In Spirit

A man should be judged not by his stature or appearance, but by the size of his heart, soul and spirit. You may see someone and form an impression, but have no idea what has entailed in their individual life’s journey. Cory Roberts has learned that “isms” exist in our society and he has been the recipient of sizeism, because he’s always been taller and larger than most. But what people don’t see is the size of his heart and Cory Roberts has a huge one.

Cory Roberts of Nacogdoches, Texas, is an actor, researcher and writer. He will be seen early next year, onscreen, starring in a movie called “The Bad Batch,” playing the part of “The Bridgeman,” a movie also starring Jim Carrey and Keanu Reeves. It’s a very surreal, unusual movie that will definitely raise some eyebrows and garner huge media attention.

Cory has experienced one of society’s “isms,” sizeism, from a very young age. “I was a ten pound baby,” he said. “From what I understand, they thought I had gigantism because I was growing so fast. So in a lot of my pictures you see everybody else and then you have me.”  An imposing figure of a man, Cory stands 6’5” and could have perhaps played in the NFL as a guard or defensive tackle. “I played all the sports (in school) basketball, football, tennis- I was very athletic,” he explained. “When you’re a larger than normal child, you spend most of your life on stage, even if you don’t want to be. You’re constantly getting attention, not normal attention. When you look different, you get different attention.“

But is that good or bad?  “It was both, “he said. “Ultimately, it was good. It got me to where I am at now, to be able to be on stage and to know that I’m allowing someone to look at me, and get an experience from what I’m doing in a role to impact them in a positive or negative way,” said Cory. “So it made me stronger as a person. But it can be tough, when all you want to do is fit in. I would go into a classroom the first year and had to deal with sitting in a special chair or desk because of my size. I just wanted to be normal.”  Fortunately he had a mother that was nurturing that helped him through it. “But my mother was so loving and nurturing that it was okay,” said Cory about his mother, Ida Roberts. “People that don’t have a nurturing parent or somebody in their life can build up a lot of resentment and animosity, towards God, or whoever from being the way they are and having to constantly deal with projections on them they didn’t ask for.”

Later, when he attended Nacogdoches High school, he excelled in sports, playing football, basketball and track events, including distinguishing himself as a shot putter. But life took him in another direction. “I really was attracted to the streets, and the street life,” he explained. “I played football, but I was rebelling against authority. I was like, ‘I don’t need you to be yelling at me, I need to make some money.’”

Cory tried the street life for a while, but soon decided the street life wasn’t for him. The quest for being different and the desire for greatness were too huge for the street life.  “Around 20 or 21, I started looking at everything and wondered, ‘why am I acting like you, why do I look like you, my attitude and my energy were just like other people. So I started waking up to it and was like whoa, I know we’re all supposed to be individuals, but in the collective community of the streets, everybody is kind of rocking the same way.”

Cory decided to return to school and got a degree in welding, moved to Houston and worked for a light company. It was then he learned how to be a responsible adult. “I was around men, too, because I didn’t have a lot of mentorship,” he explained. “I was raised around very strong, educated women.” He worked as a journeyman and experienced sizeism, when told that to keep his job; he had to maintain a certain weight. “It was very brutal, it wasn’t healthy,” he said. After two years, he knew there had to be a better way, he knew that working for a light company, or being a journeyman wasn’t his destiny or permanent station in life.  Education and performance were his keys to move to the next level.

He went to school in Virginia, getting a degree in I/O Psychology, moved back to Texas, only to discover that his degree was tailor-made for larger cities. He moved to California, after getting accepted in a doctoral program, Phillips University, for organizational behavior. “I put the school address in my GPS, with $300 and came out here,” he said of those early days. He worked hard and last year, in 2015, obtained a doctorate in Organization Management and Consulting. While moonlighting, during security for high level events, he was encouraged by several people to make headshots and try his hand at acting. He found an agent, and his first role was in a Mercedes Benz commercial.

He auditioned for “The Bad Batch,” directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, a rising director, who previously made a critically acclaimed movie, “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” On his third audition, Aminpour saw something she liked. “She said, ‘I want to use you, you’re booked,’” he said. Working with her was a great experience. ”She told me a lot of positive stuff, more positive than I was ready to receive.”

There are many actors and actresses that come to Los Angeles to attain stardom. Roberts wants to use his craft to help others, especially two major groups. “I’m always focused on the elderly and children,” said Cory Roberts. “I plan on volunteering at a couple of nursing homes; just going and being-just listening, no specific agenda- just to be around to share some of my youthful energy.“ But why? What motivates an individual to help others? “As I’m growing and learning more about myself, I feel like it’s my part to help people to become free,” Cory explained. “And it’s not just financially, it’s the freedom we deserve as human beings on this planet, to live and create the way we want to.”

Cory Roberts is currently inundated with scripts and carefully selecting diverse roles that will spotlight his talent as an actor. He is also writing books for children, hopefully to give a unique perspective on size and sizeism. He’s worked with children, of kindergarten age, helped to shape the character of tomorrow’s youth. And he’s learned a lot from children. “They encourage us to use our imagination,” he said, when asked what children teach him. “I learn that we should not take ourselves so seriously and if you’re around people that don’t help you to achieve your balance; those are the people that you shouldn’t be around.” Cory Roberts, is, however, someone you want to be around, whose heart and spirit is ten times bigger than his stature, proving that a man should be defined only and definitively by the size of his heart, and the strength of his character. For that reason, Cory Roberts is one of the People You Should Know.

For more information on Cory Roberts, e-mail him at bookcoryroberts@gmail.com.