Louie was born in Cape Town, South Africa where his dream was to make movies in America. His first foray into professional theatre was as Donalbain in Shakespeare's Macbeth, when he was just 16 years old. He launched his show business career in earnest after studying at the prestigious American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. He followed that up with many roles in musical theater. Amongst other productions, he has appeared in the South African premiere of "Forever Plaid" as Jinx, "Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" as Joseph, as Don in Athol Fugard's "People Are Living There", "The Sound of Music" as Rolf and "Godspell" as John the Baptist and Judas. Before leaving Africa, he wrote, produced & directed a highly successful musical review called "2 1/2 Tenors", starring himself and one very large opera singer.
After working as a production singer on international cruise ships in the Mediterranean Sea and down the east coast of Africa; and for Spirit Cruise Lines on Lake Michigan in Chicago, Louie settled in Columbus, where he has performed in numerous commercials, most notably for Maker's Mark, Hollywood Casinos, Liebert Cooling Systems and Ohio Health, and in leading roles in independent films. Since 2001 Louie has produced & directed a number of films of his own, including, "Safe House", "Turkey Day", "A Cold Blood", "Bloodwood Forest", and the first Columbus-based sitcom web series, "Two Doors Down".
Louie is also a published author in the book "Should I Stay or Should I Go", chronicling his journey to emigrate to America . His film "A Cold Blood" has been shown at the world renown Wexner Center for the Arts and "Turkey Day" was awarded Best Film at the Wilmington Delaware International Film Festival. As an actor, he has played numerous lead roles - in feature films such as "Dark Fate", "The Courier", "Horrors of War" & "Wicked Business", and appeared alongside Jon Voight and James Caan in the Hallmark TV Movie "JL Ranch". He was nominated twice for the equivalent of the Tony Award in South Africa, called the Vita Award, and has received the Best Actor Award for his work in the 48 Hour Film Challenge 2014 in Columbus Ohio.
Challenging points in his career so far have been 5 months of living in a youth homeless shelter in New York City, and an incident that he could never forget ... when he was performing his personal cabaret on the "Achille Lauro" cruise ship and it caught on fire and sank 3 days off the coast of Somalia! (True to his mantra of turning lemons into lemonade, he fortunately captured the entire event on video and was able to sell the footage to ITN who displayed in on CNN)
Personal high points have been directing his first short film "Safe House", winning the Cape Times Best Actor in a Musical Award, and the birth of his son in November 2001!
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