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RENO, Nev. --A Reno man who long claimed to have played one of Willy Wonka's Ooompa Loompas in the original 1971 motion picture now admits he was lying.
Ezzy Dame, a high-fashion hairdresser and art enthusiast, confessed the fib Tuesday in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal. He said the false claim seemed harmless at the time but grew into a beast of a deception.
"It was not for fame or glory," said Dame, 57. "I never made a profit or earned a financial gain from this."
"There is something so special when a child looks at a little person and they're not scared or feel that they're looking at a freak. When you say you played that part, they look at you and smile. They see you as a human being," he told the newspaper.
"I never intended to harm anyone or my community by this little white lie. It was a little white lie that became my haunted nightmare."
Dame said the nightmare began two decades ago after he put it on his acting resume under the advice of his agent in Los Angeles.
He was a young man, then 23, 4 feet tall and 90 pounds. Parts for little actors were rare. His agent told him to "pad" his resume with an acting credit from Mel Stuart's 1971 film "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," he said.
The movie was Dame's favorite. He watched it religiously, partly because it portrayed little actors in a positive way. And he needed to watch what he allegedly did.
Dame is an accomplished actor. His credits do show up along with Carrie Fisher and Chevy Chase in the 1981 film "Under the Rainbow." But not in Stuart's family classic.
Two stories were published in Reno newspapers in 2003 with Dame commenting on the role he played as an Oompa Loompa.
http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2005/08/10/reno_man_admits_lying_about_wonka_role?mode=PF
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