Charles F. Porter died on Monday after a long battle with cancer, his wife, Candice Tab-Porter, announced. He was 47.
For readers who knew him from the screen, Porter was the actor who moved from a college football field at Duke to film and television after a back injury ended his hopes for the NFL. He first drew attention in the early 2000s with appearances on The Parkers, Close to Home, Without a Trace, Bones and House, then took the lead in 2011 in Wendell Scott: A Race Story, the TV movie centered on Wendell Scott, who in 1963 became the first and only African-American to ever win a NASCAR Cup race.
Porter’s career was not limited to acting. He was the lead and a producer on Image Entertainment’s 2006 horror thriller Nailed, had a small part in STX’s Jennifer Garner vehicle Peppermint, and last year produced Lifetime’s Finding Faith while also appearing in the film as a bartender. That mix of credits gave him a steady presence across television, film and producing, even as he remained best known for the projects that tied him to sports and family drama.
The detail that stays with his story is the one that came before the credits. Porter had once hoped to make it in the NFL, played defensive end at Duke and then dropped 65 pounds after his injury ended that path. He remade himself once, and by the end of his life he had built a second career that reached well beyond the field he once expected to call home.
He is survived by Candice and their two daughters, Juliette and Layla. What remains unanswered is the kind of cancer that took him, a detail his family did not provide as they marked the death of a man whose career kept finding new directions.
