Stebbins grad makes transition to the stage

Jesse Maxfield did, and told some friends. Then Maxfield noticed Charles Michael Davis on ABC Family’s “Switched at Birth” series.

That’s a long way from 2000, when Davis graduated from Stebbins High School.

“You know how hard it is to make it into Hollywood,” said Maxfield, a year behind Davis at Stebbins and now dean of students there. “This is pretty exciting.”

No one knew he would make a good actor. Not even Davis himself.

Had he paid attention to the markers, he might have figured out a lot earlier.

Davis said he had no vision of it while he was a student and track and basketball athlete at Stebbins, even though the greater Miami Valley area is rich with actors who grew up around here.

“Acting and that seemed like a distant alien world,” said Davis, who first became a print model, then an actor in televised ads and now has done several television shows.

“You had to be born in Hollywood or have famous parents or have a calling.

“I had no experience in modeling or acting. I think I played a snowman in the third-grade play. I think I had two lines. I don’t remember saying them, but the audience loved it.”

Count that as marker No. 1.

Another marker came while he was at Stebbins. While he wasn’t in theatre, he watched his friends perform in “Bye Bye Birdie.”

“I was floored. I didn’t know if I had the guts to do that,” he said.

Instead, he channeled sports.

Still — and this is another marker — Davis remembers “growing up and saying, ‘Wow, (actor) Rob Lowe actually came out of Dayton, Ohio.’ ”

Even that was not enough for Davis to turn to acting as a career. He went off to — and graduated from — Miami University in Oxford, where he also ran track. His specialty was the decathlon.

“I was in marketing,” Davis said. “I went to Miami because it was close, and I wanted to run track.

“I was doing great (in school) and my times (in track) were good.”

He was also able to stay in sports with his degree, taking an internship with the Cincinnati Bengals in ticket sales.

“I figured, that’s perfect,” Davis said. “I’m in sports, doing sales, I’m making money.

“But I hated going to work. I hated it. I would take long lunches. It just didn’t feel right.”

Another marker. “At Miami, I did marketing,” Davis said. “My lowest grades were in business, like marketing. My highest grades were in electives, like theatre. I did take a theatre course there. Speech communications. I had a wonderful teacher who came up to me one day and said, ‘You know what, you should do voice-overs.’”

The markers were coming closer together now.

There was an acting class that needed a football player. There was a ballroom dance class.

“My dancing partner was in theatre. I asked her what she was going to do after she graduated,” Davis said. “She said, ‘I’m going to be an actress.’ I laughed.”

“I said, ‘Really, what are you going to do?’ I said, ‘You’re throwing away your college education.’ I said, ‘You’re crazy.’ I totally dismissed it. She packed up and went to LA. I don’t know what happened to her.”

What happened to Davis is he went to work in a Colerain mall, near Cincinnati, during school.

“I was working at Express,” Davis said. “This guy was buying all sorts of clothes. He’s doing a photo shoot.

“He said, ‘Hey, just call this guy. Jake Lang with Wings Models.’ ”

It was a Cincinnati agency, and Davis made the call. He had worked with some models at the store, and Jake asked him if he was dependable. He said he was, especially for the $85 an hour he would get modeling for a T-shirt catalog.

“Somebody has to believe in you, and push you in the right direction,” Lang said. “That’s what we do. We’re a model and talent agency. The last couple years, we’ve focused on our talent. Models are models. You don’t have to be anything special. But talent, you have to be born with talent — a desire to be on stage, a desire to be on television. You need a very extroverted type of kid. That’s what we saw in Charles.”

Soon, he was modeling for Elder-Beerman, Fifth Third Bank and the catalog.

Then, he went to Florida for an acting tryout, eventually ending up on “That’s So Raven,” “The Game” and “Switched at Birth.”

He continues to model and appears in television commercials for brands including Pontiac, New Balance, Foot Locker, McDonald’s McCafe, Nike, Sony, Coors Light and other products.

“I had no experience modeling,” Davis said. “But it’s the same as sports. It’s discipline. I enjoyed being on stage as much as in sports. It was a turning point. You take a path, a known path, or do you want to take a risk? I knew I could learn things pretty quickly. I was a decathlete. If I could learn 10 events, I could learn how to act.”

His parents, Charles (retired military) and Marina Davis, encouraged him.

According to Charles: “When he got into this modeling, we said, ‘Well, what about your degree in business from Miami?’

“ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what I’m doing is business.’

“When I see him on TV, I tell my wife, ‘That’s our son.’ We’re very excited.”

A few years ago, Davis decided to move to Los Angeles, where the acting jobs are. His three sisters scattered to the East. His parents stayed in Riverside.

He spends his time working, or, “I work at getting work. I take classes. I audition almost every day for something — a print model, conditioning, acting. I branch out and do things that are sort of related to acting. I take piano lessons to help me understand music. I do voice-over.”

He takes martial arts, reads, studies film.

“It was like I heard a calling,” Davis said. “And by some strange coincidence, I got to answer that call.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2157 or mkatz@DaytonDailyNews.com.