Weekdays, Steven King, AS '93, is a marketing manager. His nights and weekends are another story.

"I don't know what other people do on their weekends," King says, "but I'm out killing vampires, and getting paid for it."

Paid as an actor, that is.

While working full-time for a bank and, more recently, a publishing firm, King has transformed a onetime youthful hobby--and a memorable name--into a part-time career. He's acted in three sci-fi/horror films and several theatrical productions in Baltimore.

"I'm having a ball," he says. "I've got the best of both worlds."

King grew up in Pittsburgh, the son of a hospital administrator and a software engineer. He became interested in acting at age 9 or 10, first appearing in a summer arts camp production of The Pirates of Penzance.

Acting classes at the Pittsburgh Playhouse followed, as did a stint as a host of Kidsburgh, a children's program on hometown station WPXI-TV. King also landed jobs in a couple of commercials.

"When my voice started to change," he says, "I stopped getting work."

As a student at suburban Mount Lebanon High School, King continued performing, playing trumpet in the school's marching band. He was interested in studying business-related communications, and chose to attend the University of Delaware after visiting the campus.

"Once you see the campus, it just gets you," King says. "I was accepted at a lot of different schools. Delaware is a large school, but it doesn't feel like it. I just fell in love with it."

King took TV production classes and also studied public speaking with the late Walter Rykiel, whom he cites as a major influence. He began anchoring a show called University of Delaware News as part of his class work, gaining valuable experience in front of the camera.

He was exposed to working on the other side of the lens when he and fellow students made a movie. "A horror movie," he chuckles, "called Animal Instinct 3."

After graduation, King completed a management training program at Macy's in New York and went to work at a store in the central New Jersey suburbs. Two years later, he returned to Delaware to take a job with MBNA America.

"I did a little bit of everything," he says. "I was a credit analyst and a loan officer." After he was promoted to marketing group administrator with MBNA in Maryland, he moved to Baltimore. Last August, he was hired by the Agora Publishing Co., also as a marketing manager.

When King moved to Baltimore, he once again became involved in acting. After working nights and weekends for many years, he found himself with an 8 to 5 job.

He began studying with teacher Barry Feinstein, who dared him to audition for the Baltimore Playwrights Festival.

He was cast, somewhat against his "nice guy" type, as a disturbed young man named Paul Fields. The play was called Falling Grace, and it was presented in 1999 at the Directors Choice Theatre.

According to King, Paul Fields is one of his favorite roles. The character spoke with a Southern accent, so the actor got a chance to showcase his flair for dialect. And, the role required a wide range of emotions.

"I really learned a lot," King says.

Additional parts--in drama, musicals and comedy--followed, with King playing parts from a film documentarian to "Mr. Big" in Funny Money.

It was while doing back-to-back plays in 1999 that he heard about auditions for an independent film being cast in Baltimore by director Don Dohler. King auditioned, was called back and was cast in Alien Rampage. King played Deputy Sheriff Pete Woodson of fictional Grace Point, Md., where a 9-foot cyborg and a diabolical alien stage the "rampage"--one, it should be noted, that eventually claims the life of the deputy sheriff.

As it turns out, dying has become something of a specialty for King. In Harvesters, King's character is a member of a twisted clan that kills people and sells their organs on the black market. The family is taken hostage and much bloodshed ensues. "I die," King reveals, "by stepping on a land mine."

Simulating that particular demise required six or seven gallons of stage blood. "It was disgusting," King says, "but, it is a horror movie."

In Stakes, King plays a scientist from a parallel world being overrun by vampires. He and his colleagues make their way to Earth, finding that three of the vampires have gotten here as well. "It's a bloody mess," King says.

Dohler's company, Timewarp Films, recently secured a deal for national and international distribution of Harvesters, and Alien Rampage won a first place at the 2001 Festival of Fantastic Films in Manchester, England.

"These are cult movies," King notes. "But, they're good, and there are so many talented people involved! I enjoy working with them."

King, who says both MBNA and Agora have been "very supportive" of his second career, enjoys the varying challenges of stage and film acting. The latter, he notes, "is very technical." There aren't rehearsals as such. After learning their lines, the actors do a scene with the cameras rolling.

"If there's a scene that involves emotion, you have to be able to do it 20 times in a row," King says. "You have to draw on that emotion again and again."

With stage work, he adds, "it's such a huge experience to rehearse every night, and go on and nobody's saying 'cut.'

"You're not just memorizing lines and saying them. You have to understand what you're saying," he adds. "It's not acting so much as reacting. And it's rewarding to go out and do your best and receive that applause at the end."

Although the famous author of countless horror novels spells his first name with a 'ph' instead of a 'v,' Steven King long ago got used to the jokes.

"In elementary school," he says, "people used to call me 'Cujo.' But, people remember my name."

--Kevin Riordan