Sara M Moniuszko,Andrea Mandell|USA TODAY
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Geoffrey Owens is opening up about how his lifehas changed since being job-shamed last year for working at Trader Joe's.
On the Screen Actors Guild Awards red carpet Sunday, the 57-year-old actor told USA TODAY the way the public shaming changed his life has "been bizarre."
"I was still working;Iwas still doing occasional things but since that thing happened… I’ve been involved in threefilms and threeor fourTV projects and done hundreds of interviews," he said."And my life is completely different. It’s not better, Ihad a good life before all this. But it’s certainly more productive in terms of the career I’ve chosen, and my calling, I’ve been able to fulfill that a great deal more since all this happened."
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Owens said he's received "so much support" since the incident happened, which was not what he originally expected.
"When it first happened, I thought it was going to be devastating; Ithought it was going to be catastrophic, and it has been the opposite," he said."So fortunately, that difficult time didn’t last very long. A couple of hours of humiliationversus the last fivemonths of support and love and employment. So it was worth it.”
During the opening of the awards show, where cameras pan to different actors in the audience,Owens also mentioned the Trader Joe's incident.
"I found myself in the dark wood of unemployment and debt, but instead of switching careers like a sane person, I took a job at a local Trader Joe's to see if I could hang in there with my career and it's actually worked out pretty well," he said. "I'm Geoffrey Owens and I'm an actor!"
Owens played Sondra Huxtable’s husband, Elvin, on the hit sitcom "The Cosby Show" in the '80s and '90s.
More: 'Cosby Show' actor Geoffrey Owens uses job-shaming to send message to struggling actors
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