Have I Got a Story for You
I’m Steve Molter, an American actor and multidisciplinary artist living in Bangkok, working across film, theatre, music, photography, podcast hosting, writing, and experience design.
I’m also a stroke survivor, husband, and cat dad to four wonderful kitties. Everything I do is rooted in empathy, storytelling, and a deep curiosity about how people think, feel, connect, and collaborate.
Please reach out if you’d like to work together!
My first twenty-three years were spent braving the intolerable, freezing, maelstrom known as Winter in New England.
How It All BeganBut one summer day in 2003, I opened a dusty, old shoebox that was buried in the back of my closet, and found the very first cassette tape my mom allowed me to buy with my own money: Beach Boys “California (And Other) Girls.” My mom would have rather had me spend the money on something more “educational,” but it was my allowance money, after all. I was eight.
By the time I was 12, I was crushing power chords on my cherry red Rok Axe guitar in the basement, and by 14, I formed my first rock band as a freshman in high school. In college, I was writing more complex pieces on my acoustic and penning lyrics in journals beside the prose and poetry I wrote (and still do) nightly.
The post-college days had me writing and performing throughout New England with my first adult band. But on the precipice of my twenty-fourth icy winter, when I fatefully found that Beach Boys tape that seemed to emanate sunshine from the shoebox, I decided to pack up my guitars, tighten my belt, and drive across eleven states to sunny California. I was 23.
Since then, I have poured my creativity into numerous projects that are detailed in the various sections of this site.
Finding My WayHighlighted by performances across the US and Europe with my band Beware of Safety, I have achieved personal goals and successes with my music over which my 12-year-old self would totally freak out.
In 2010, my brother and sister-in-law gave me a 120mm film camera for Christmas which inspired me to shoot photographs, and eventually I purchased a fancy Canon to expand my visual range. I have been popping off shots ever since and my desire to experiment in visual art has turned into a pursuit of photographic documentation of my travels as well as the world just beyond my doorstep.
During this time, I also cultivated my appreciation for and dedication to the English language and began sharing my work (personal essays, prose, and the like) publicly in 2011. Select pieces have been published on Thought Catalog, and I won a competition at MusicJobs.com with a piece I wrote about, you guessed it, music.
On September 11, 2012, I was struck by the first of two strokes which would stricken me to the ICU for eight days.
A Bump in the RoadThe stroke left me with a permanent, but highly manageable blind spot despite the potential for more life-threatening issues at the time.
This ordeal took place on the cliffs in Santa Monica, California while penning the best man’s speech to end all best man speeches for my dearest friend’s approaching nuptials, Three weeks later, I delivered the aforementioned epic speech to an enraptured audience of the couple’s families, and all of our friends. I’ve written essays about my strokes here, here, and here.
In January 2016, after a whole bunch of life experience through recovering from the strokes, making art, touring around the the US and EU with my band, and forging bonds with fellow humans, I decided to quit my job, sell and donate my things, and give myself over to the affable embrace of the world by traveling the earth for a handful of months.
I was moving towards something greater than myself to uncover something great within myself. I never knew what would come next, but I knew that my trust in the inhabitants of this planet, and in my own self, would allow me to plant the seeds for the future phases of my life to become a greater contributor to humanity's progress.
You may have noticed a podcast link up there in the header that hasn't yet been explained in this gigantic about me section.
Connecting with HumansThat is a podcast I host called Five Questions. I started this project to explore the oneness of humanity by asking what I think are life's bigger questions that focus on the way a person thinks, the way they feel, and their core values.
Photography and music are critical pieces of the podcast. Each interview is accompanied by a black and white photograph of my guest, and I use music deliberately throughout each episode to complement the mood and rhythm of the conversations. Five Questions is one of those seeds that continues to blossom.
As my global travels wound down and armed with decades worth of diverse professional skills and experiences, I launched myself into a career in design.
Full Circle, Designing LifeSpecifically User Experience Design. A field in which the main focus is empathy for the customer, the client, the human being interacting with businesses, organizations, products, and systems in this world.
I finally see my seemingly disparate yet extensive skillsets gelling into a career that provides value to me and the projects on which I work.
I spent several years leading and nurturing a team of UX professionals (designers, researchers, engineers) and innovating the $800 billion global aviation space.
Did I mention I studied acting at university?? Well, I did. :) And it’s my main focus again right now.
Deepening My Sense of SelfThe craft’s foundation in empathy and creating fully realized characters from words on a page is what drew me in. I’ve always found film to be a collage of my favorite mediums: imagery, music, and storytelling. Though I stepped away in my early twenties to pursue music, the pull toward acting never really left.
In 2020, just before the pandemic, my wife and I were invited by two friends to appear in their feature-length film Pasadena. They were small roles, but the experience rekindled my fire for acting. Then in 2024, after steadying myself while we relocated to Bangkok, I enrolled in acting classes, got new headshots, and started auditioning and making my own stuff.
Since then, I’ve appeared in feature and short films, TV shows, commercials, music videos, and theatre productions, and continue to focus on my acting as a means to connect with myself and others through creative storytelling.
All of these wonderful experiences have forged and become the path that is constantly leading me to become the greater contributor I strive to be.
It All Leads ForwardI spend the majority of my free time around my home in Bangkok, Thailand taking inspiration from my wonderful wife, friends, film, and music, all while taking zillions of pictures of my lovely kitties Major Garland Briggs, Naido Potato, FBI Director Gordon Cole, and Dougie Jones.
It’s been a long journey, with many more opportunities and challenges ahead of me. But I’ve begun wiping away the haze on the mirror of my life, and I’m seeing myself and my value with great clarity.