Ricky Schroder recently reflected on the potential pitfalls of a career in Hollywood. The 53-year-old actor recently launched the Reel American Heroes Foundation, a nonprofit organization that produces films, documentaries, and TV series that promote patriotic and traditional values. During an interview with Fox News Digital, Scroder, who started as a child actor in the 1979 film “The Champ,” shared advice that he would give his younger self.
He said, “Don’t lose sight of the Lord. Because in Hollywood, it’s easy to lose sight of the Lord there.” He continued, “You get tempted by so many things, and temptation can just kind of get you off track. And so, I would say if I could speak to my younger self, it’d be, ‘Read your Bible more.'” Schroder added, “There’s no real regrets. As I look back on my life, as far as professionally, I had the best opportunities I took when they came along. I tried to develop opportunities as best I could.”
Schroder admitted he never fit in in Hollywood, saying, “But I never fit in Hollywood. It was never sort of a desire of mine, let’s say. I was put into ‘The Champ’ when I was 7 years old and turned 8, making ‘The Champ.’ And so it’s been an interesting path to go down – when you didn’t make those choices originally. Other people made choices for you and put you on a track. But today, I make my own choices. And so, that’s why I sort of decided to leave Hollywood, moved back to Colorado, and I still want to tell stories. But a different forum, a different platform.”
Schroder’s Reel American Heroes Foundation will focus on telling the stories of “veterans, active soldiers, first responders, Gold Star families, as well as past and present heroic figures,” according to the organization’s website. “Our goal is to inspire, raise awareness, entertain, and educate.” The “Silver Spoons” alum told Fox News Digital he was motivated to found the nonprofit after the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced its new diversity and inclusion guidelines for Oscars consideration in 2024.
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In June, the Academy Awards released its Aperture 2025 initiative – a sweeping set of regulations designed to make Hollywood more equitable and diverse. Per the initiative, film producers and directors are required to submit to the Academy a dossier that indicates the race, gender, sexual orientation and disability status of their film’s cast and crew members. Schroder said, “They came up with some diversity, equity and inclusion guidelines that said you had to have certain story themes and characters, LGBTQ+ and minorities, inside your content to be eligible for the Oscar for Best Picture, and I was really offended by that.”
He continued, “I thought, ‘That’s not right.’ You know, [the 1998 war drama] ‘Saving Private Ryan’ today wouldn’t be eligible for the Best Picture category because of these guidelines. And so it gave me the idea to start a foundation that we could build into a sort of, hopefully, a ‘Patriot PBS.’ It’s an aggregator for good kinds of stories with values and principles that uplift America instead of tearing it down.” Schroder explained that the Reel American Heroes Foundation is also seeking submissions of real-life heroes’ stories for future projects.
He said, “We’re hoping to get your stories. We are hoping other people will contribute and send us stories. And we can aggregate these stories and restart reprogramming America away from the DEI programming – diversity, equity and inclusion – to the real principles and values that built this great nation.”