William Vito Pollina, aka Billy Pollina, (born June 25th, 1961) is an American film and television producer. He was born in Harvey, Illinois to Italian immigrants from Sicily.
Pollina studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA).
A film buff at an early age with an interest in photography, music and theatrics, Pollina fit naturally into the producer role. Pollina was a theater fanatic and would promote concerts and plays at an early age. He first got the film bug when working as a bit player in Richard Rush's slapstick cop drama Freebie and the Bean starring James Caan and Alan Arkin.
After high school in San Mateo, CA., Pollina moved to Los Angeles where he worked various jobs pursuing an acting career. Eventually, Pollina segued into production work when he grew tired of the audition grind, an area he's remained active in since. One of his first jobs was working with puppet masters Sid and Marty Krofft.
During the 1980s and 1990s, he ran a successful film and television marketing company called Optical Nerve where he made many of his contacts in the industry. Mr. Pollina has the distinction of designing and creating the first ever DVD interactive menu for home video maven, Warren Lieberfarb at Warner Home Video. The use of interactive menus is commonplace now but at the time Mr. Pollina's design for Clint Eastwood's Academy Award winning, Unforgiven was ground breaking. Mr. Pollina was President of Optical Nerve when it served as one of FOX Sports Net's key marketing companies during FSN's initial launch. Soon after this launch FSN went on to surpass ESPN as the nations leading broadcast sports authority and became the number one supplier of live sports in most areas of the US. He left the marketing world to pursue television and film development in 2000 and teamed with several television writers to produce award winning short films.
His first theatrical success was with 2004's You Got Served for Sony Screen Gems which delved into the street dance battling and break dancing craze. The film has the distinction of opening #1 at the box office and marking January as a new "season" for successful film releases.
Since "You Got Served" he has branched out into television, and new media.
Pollina has never been married and currently lives in Los Angeles and New York.
