D. J. Qualls

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article.
Please improve it or discuss changes on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.

Donald Joseph Qualls (born June 12, 1978) is an American actor, better known as DJ Qualls. Qualls was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and was raised in Manchester, Tennessee, as one of five children.

He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer, at age 14. He was sick, and he had major surgery and treatment for two years. He had his spleen removed, though, so he'd be prone to certain kinds of infections today because the spleen is a major organ in cleaning and filtering the blood. Qualls survived after multiple surgeries, as well as chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Once Qualls had survived, he believed there was something bigger and better out there for him. When he was little Qualls went to Camp Horizon. As an adult and a cancer research and awareness advocate Qualls volunteered there as a counselor until his celebrity status made him a distraction. Where he grew up, the two main industries were casket making and pajama making. He worked in a factory for a summer.

After graduating from Coffee County Central High School in 1992, Qualls was desperate to get out of Tennessee, so he took off for a foreign country where he didn't have to learn a new language. He ended up at King's College London studying English language and literature. He eventually returned to Tennessee, after about three years. At first he worked as a paralegal in 1997 and began studying at Belmont University in Nashville.

He was an extra in the HBO movie Against the Wall in 1994. He got the small role of Jason in the television miniseries Mama Flora's Family (1998) while participating for free in Community Theater. After auditioning for a one liner in Road Trip (2000) destiny took over and he was asked to come from the Atlanta office to meet producer Ivan Reitman in Beverly Hills. He is probably most famous for portraying a college nerd who performs a wild dance at a black fraternity in Road Trip. He made his debut in that movie as a lead character, the shy virgin Kyle Edwards. After the movie was released, Qualls was reportedly afraid people would think his personality was the same as that of the character he played in the movie.

After Road Trip, Qualls increasingly worked as a model, working for Prada and with photographers David LaChapelle and Steve Klein. The film Cherry Falls (2000) came next, where he played another virgin named Wally. In 2001 he played Neil Lawrence in Chasing Holden.

In 2002 he appeared as Archie in Comic Book Villains, as Josh in the episode My Student of Scrubs, he was Andrew in the movie Big Trouble, Junior in the Lone Star State of Mind movie, and he also starred as Dizzy Gillespie Harrison in the film The New Guy. He was playing the main character Dizzy Harrison (Gil Harris) when he got to kiss Eliza Dushku.

He has also done work on television as well. He has made guest appearances on shows such as Monk, Scrubs, Criminal Minds, Lost, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and CSI. Qualls spewed a string of profanity when he was chastised for "ruining" the surprise aspect of a surprise party in an episode of Punk'd.

According to early reports, Qualls was a passenger aboard JetBlue Airways Flight 292 on September 21, 2005, a flight in which the landing gear wouldn't fully retract forcing an emergency landing. But both Qualls' publicist told E! Thursday Qualls was not on board. Qualls, however, was at the airport, where he met Hustle & Flow co-star Taryn Manning, who was on the plane.

Qualls' next project is comedy called Delta Farce, set to be release in 2007. He will star along side Blue Collar Comedy Tour stars Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy.