He’s finishing his third movie in little more than a year, but somehow has found time to write a book, dabble in real estate, rep a line of nutritional supplements and lose 20 pounds. It seems the only time Bill Romanowski gets to sit down these days is when he’s on a witness stand.
At 39, Romo is a study in contrasts. He feels reborn, but wants to bury his alter ego forever. His life is equal parts what he wants it to be and what he doesn’t, what he relishes and what he regrets, who he is and who he used to be.
He wants to be a big-time actor, a classic Hollywood tough guy. Stallone, maybe. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sure, it’s probably not going to happen, but a man can dream, can’t he?
“I had a premonition,” Romanowski said. “I said to myself, ‘Hollywood needs a new Terminator.’ It came to me during my last offseason when I was on my way to the track to run. A month later, Arnold said he was going to run for governor, which meant he was going to be removed. Then all this stuff started happening.”
For now, he’ll have to settle for being Lambert. No first name, just Lambert. He’s the macho prison guard in the remake of “The Longest Yard,” which opens May 27.
Shocking as it may sound, Romo rattles a few cages in the movie. But before you ask, the answer is no. He doesn’t break any jaws, spit in any faces or fracture any eye sockets.
“I get a little aggressive,” he said. “I’m not a real nice guy.”
Oh, but he is. That’s the part you don’t know, the side you never see. Off the screen, away from the field and under the radar, Romo isn’t Romo. Doesn’t even know him. He’s Bill. Or Billy. “Or William, if my wife is mad at me.”
People still call him Romo, always will, but it’s not the same. It’s just a nickname now, not an obsession. Having played the last of his 16 NFL seasons, Romanowski wants to ditch his alter ego once and for all.
As his career wore on, he says, he lost track of who he was. The caricature, the wild- eyed cheap-shot artist with the mysterious pill box, came to define the man. He couldn’t see it then, but sees it all too clearly now.
“The harder I pushed, the more I crossed the line on the field, the more praise I got, the more people liked me, and the more recognition I got,” he said. “The more I did that, the farther away I got from being who Bill Romanowski is at the core. I was addicted to success, and I was addicted to winning. I didn’t want to sit down and actually face who Bill really is.”
Romo’s last claim to infamy as a player came in 2003, when he punched former Raiders teammate Marcus Williams hard enough to break Williams’ left eye socket, a stunt that cost him a $340,000 settlement from a jury. Before that, there were his days in Denver, when his helmet-to-helmet hit broke Kerry Collins’ jaw. And, of course, there was his personal Watergate, when he spit in the face of 49ers receive J.J. Stokes. Oh, and who would could forget that diet-pill thing that landed his wife in court?
Just when it seemed like he and controversy had parted company for good, Romo’s name surfaced in the BALCO investigation last year. After testing positive for THG, the designer steroid developed by Victor Conte and his merry band of mad scientists, Romanowski was forced to testify to the BALCO grand jury.
Others, most notably Barry Bonds, have taken the Fifth or claimed they were duped, that they didn’t know those were steroids they were taking. Romo won’t go there. He did it, he knew he was doing it, and he’s willing to admit it.
“I knew everything I’ve ever put in my body and why I was putting it in, what it was going to do, and how it was going to help me,” he said. “I knew what I was doing. I know what I’m doing every day.”
More than anything, he’s looking forward to acting – he’s in the final stages of his third movie, “Benchwarmers,” based on an Adam Sandler screenplay – while occasionally glancing in the rearview mirror. When you’ve got as much history as Romo, you can’t help it.
“It’s a thin line between right and wrong,” he said. “I think, at the core, you’re probably talking about integrity. I took a few notches out of my integrity, of who I am as a person. You get to the NFL and you magnify everything. This is your livelihood. This is what you dreamed about. This is what you always wanted to do. You’re making good money, setting yourself up for life, and I didn’t want that to end.
“They’re always trying to find guys a little bit faster, a little bit stronger, a little bit better. They’re always bringing guys in on Tuesday and running them to see if they can take over for Romo. As I got older, I felt the fear of the unknown, of being done. I was chasing that last year, slaying that next dragon.”
Romanowski says he didn’t begin experimenting with steroids until the latter stages of his career. To hear him tell it, it was all part of his addiction, to his devotion to his alter ego.
“You start knocking on that door of right and wrong: ‘Morally, should I do this?”‘ he said. “The fact that I have to sit here after a 16-year career and even talk about it, that hurts me, but I do it and I’ll continue to do it. Hopefully, in time, that fades because that’s far from who I am.
“It’s that drive, being addicted to success, addicted to winning, addicted to being the best. … There were things that got in the way. If I could change a few things I would, but that’s probably a pretty good place to start.”
Catch Jim Armstrong from 6-9 a.m. during “The Press Box” on ESPN 560 AM and on Fox Sports Net’s “Insider Edition.” He can be reached at 303-820-5452 or jmarmstrong@denverpost.com.
