If you watch TV, then you’re probably familiar with the Allstate Mayhem commercials. This is a series of ads the insurance company has run for well over a decade at this point where the embodiment of mayhem, played by Dean Winters, causes destruction. He’ll take the form of a distracted teenager who accidentally hits your car in the parking lot or a raccoon living in the attic, creating a hole in the roof. Life is full of unexpected occurrences that are no fault of your own, and these ads highlight that in funny and creative ways.
It’s rare for a commercial mascot to stick around for too long, but Mayhem has persisted. Over 100 of these commercials have appeared on our TV sets over the years, and the best Allstate Mayhem ads allow Winters to bring his sardonic delivery to the silliest scenarios. And you’re not mistaken for thinking Winters looks familiar: He’s appeared in numerous movies and TV shows in addition to his commercial work, plying his trade in projects like “John Wick,” “30 Rock,” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”
He may not be an A-list star, but Winters has excelled in Hollywood in a manner many would-be actors can only dream of. However, beneath the memorable ads, the supporting roles, and the sitcom guest spots is a truly tragic story of an actor who almost lost everything. No amount of mayhem in an Allstate commercial could compare to the kind of turmoil Winters has endured in real life.
Dean Winters had a tough time making it in Hollywood
Plenty of actors struggle to make an impact when they’re starting out. Some are lucky enough to get a gig here and there to pay the bills, but it’s a long journey to any semblance of stability in Hollywood. Dean Winters is certainly no exception, and like many actors, he has his share of horror stories from auditioning. In an interview with Backstage, Winters revealed that he actually lost his temper during a reading after being totally ignored by the project’s director. “This guy is in the back on his phone, texting [and] eating a sandwich,” Winters revealed. “I remember taking my script and throwing it at him, hitting him in the face. I walked out of the room.”
Winters got a break in the 1990s by landing the part of Ryan O’Reily in the hit series “Oz,” which remains one of the best HBO shows ever, and he’s parlayed that success into a variety of roles. It’s good to know throwing a script at a director isn’t enough to get you blacklisted. But the grind never stops. One would assume that getting a gig on a critically acclaimed HBO show means plenty of new doors opening, but that’s not always the case. As Winters told Backstage, it’s something that up-and-coming actors often struggle to get their heads around. “If you would’ve asked me 26 years ago when I started if I’d still be auditioning, I’d be like, ‘Hell, no.’ But of course I am.”
A lack of self belief almost cost him his 30 Rock part
In addition to “Oz,” Dean Winters got ample work with guest spots on the likes of “NYPD Blue,” “Sex and the City,” and “CSI: Miami.” It was a lot of drama work, and at the time, it may have been hard for people to view Winters as more comedic. This was still some distance from the Allstate Mayhem gigs where he would regularly show how far he was willing to commit for a comedic bit. But a casting director somewhere must’ve seen something in him, as he landed the role of Dennis, Liz Lemon’s (Tina Fey) ex-boyfriend, who did some questionable things on “30 Rock.”
In his chat with Backstage, Winters revealed that he initially walked out of his “30 Rock” audition: “I go into the room, I see 20 guys. I recognized all of them; they were all comics. They were famous guys. I was a drama guy. I’m like, What am I doing here? I signed the list, I sat down, looked around the room, and I’m like, I don’t have a shot in hell. I got up and I left.” Winters walked to Central Park and got himself a beer. He was ready to get on with his day when he got a call from his agent’s assistant, who told him that if he didn’t at least audition for this job that they were going to drop him as a client.
The way Winters tells it, the whole thing worked out for the best, because the walk back to Rockefeller Center gave him time to figure out how he was going to approach the audition. “The way that I played it apparently was different from the other 20 guys that had gone in,” he explained. “The way I played it was exactly how they wanted it, which was: This guy believed in everything that he said, no matter how audacious it was, and [he said it] with a straight face.” It became a role he’d continue to play across all seven seasons of “30 Rock,” appearing in a total of 15 episodes.
His heart stopped for almost five minutes
Self-doubt and bad auditions are par for the course for any actor, but Dean Winters experienced something in 2009 that no one should ever have to go through. It threatened not only to derail his entire acting career but end his life. As a matter of fact, his life did end — albeit only for a few minutes.
One day in June 2009, Winters woke up suffering from a high fever. Despite hoping it would go away on its own, it appeared to get worse, and he’d later realize he had contracted a bacterial infection. He made the trip to his doctor’s office but collapsed just outside of it: He had gone septic and had to be rushed to the hospital. On the ride over, his heart stopped, and as he told Us Weekly years after the fact, “I was dead in the back of an ambulance, and the great doctors at Lenox Hill Hospital brought me back to life after around four-and-a-half minutes.”
Apparently, he wasn’t told immediately that he had died. That information came several months after the fact, but it was probably for the best given that Winters still had a long road to recovery. Following the incident, he spent three more weeks in intensive care. Winters would later tell the Sioux City Journal that someone told him he was “never going to walk again.” It was only the beginning of what would become an arduous healthcare journey.
He had to have some amputations following multiple surgeries
Following his stint in the ICU, Dean Winters was able to go back home to recover. After a month recuperating, he developed gangrene, a medical condition in which bodily tissue begins to die and can come about after a severe infection, like the one Winters had. Gangrene restricts blood flow to various parts of the body and can be fatal if it isn’t treated soon enough. Winters had to go back to the hospital, and over the course of the next year, he underwent 18 operations, including amputations for two of his toes as well as part of one thumb. Other procedures included skin grafts and reconstruction on his right hand.
It was an incredibly tumultuous time, and one in which Winters couldn’t really act. It even got to a point where he wondered if he’d be able to continue his passion, but he found hope, as he told the Sioux City Journal. “I was feeling sorry for myself — I had lost toes and half a thumb and the tip of my nose fell off — and this nurse took me to the children’s burn unit,” he explained. “I saw these eight kids with prosthetic legs playing soccer and I thought, ‘That’s it.’ That’s the moment when I turned everything around and decided to learn how to walk again.” That’s precisely what Winters did, and he managed to get his career back on track.
Winters suffers from neuropathy and chronic pain to this day
Dean Winters has also spoken with Page Six about his health journey. In a candid interview, the actor told the tabloid that he struggles with neuropathy following his many surgeries. It’s a condition that can sometimes be caused by severe infections in which nerve damage makes it difficult to feel things properly, especially in the hands and feet. There might be tingling sensations or pain in certain situations, and for Winters, it’s a daily struggle — the actor’s neuropathy is particularly bad, he’s revealed.
“I haven’t taken a step since 2009 without being in pain,” the actor explained. “I’ve got neuropathy on, you know, on a whole different level where I can’t feel my hands and my feet. But if I stepped on a pebble, it’s like I go through the roof.” While treatments exist for neuropathy, it sounds like Winters still has to struggle every day just to do the most basic of tasks. It makes everyday life hard, but he refuses to let it get him down. “I’ve been sucking it up because, you know, the alternative is not a place where I want to be,” he told Page Six.
He lost his Happy Town role to Steven Weber
Considering Dean Winters went through numerous surgeries and hospitalizations, it’s understandable that his career had to take a back seat while he recovered. One job we know he missed out on is the short-lived ABC drama series “Happy Town.” The show’s about a small town that endured a massive tragedy where several people went missing. Some search for answers while others want to put the unpleasantness behind them, but it doesn’t take long until more unusual circumstances occur, forcing everyone to consider whether there are mystical forces at play.
Dean Winters was originally cast as John Haplin, a father whose daughter is one of the missing townsfolk and is still holding out hope she can be found. He filmed the pilot and can be seen alongside the cast in early promo images, but he was unavailable when ABC picked it up for series. Winters was replaced with Steven Weber, who’s probably best known for starring in “Wings,” one of many TV shows that’s far better than you remember. “Happy Town” received mixed reviews and it didn’t even get a chance to air its full first season before getting the chop. ABC canceled the show after six of its eight episodes, with the final two eventually being released on the network’s website.
Winters found out who his real friends are during his health troubles
Despite having to back out of “Happy Town,” Dean Winters was able to bounce back relatively quickly. Around the time all of his procedures happened, he joked to Page Six, “People in Los Angeles think I’m dead.” Fortunately, he had already worked in the industry for over a decade at this point. Even with a hiatus, he’d soon realize that he had some true friends in Tinseltown who certainly hadn’t forgotten about him.
Winters told the Sioux City Journal that one of the first people to reach out to him following his medical emergency was Tina Fey, who insisted that whenever he was ready, they would put Dennis back in “30 Rock.” They were even willing to work around his limited capabilities after his surgeries. “They put work gloves on my hands because both of them had been cut open,” Winters recalled. “They put me in a cast because they had cut off my baby toe and she leaned me up against a wall and I did a scene like that. That was my first day back.”
Denis Leary also offered him work, putting his character, Johnny Gavin, in the first episode of “Rescue Me” Season 7 after he had been absent since Season 5. These gigs reminded Hollywood that Winters was alive and well and work flowed in more regularly, including a small part in 2014’s “John Wick.” His reputation preceded him with that one, as he told Esquire, “I didn’t have a good audition, but the directors, Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, were big ‘Oz’ fans so they were like, ‘When you walked in the room you had the job.'”
He originally turned down playing Allstate’s Mayhem guy
Dean Winters is living proof that commercials can actually give you a great platform as an actor. Acting in ads is often seen as the bottom rung on the Hollywood ladder, with a lot of people viewing commercials as a starting place for kids taking their first steps or a dumping ground for those who lack the talent to make it in television or film. This is how Winters felt about commercial acting jobs when he was first approached about the Allstate Mayhem ads.
In a 2015 chat with HuffPost, Winters revealed how he thought he was too good to be a commercial actor. “When they offered me the commercial, I said no,” he said. “My smartass remark was that I became an actor so I wouldn’t have to put on a suit and sell insurance. And then my agent slapped me around and said, ‘Come on, get real.'” That initial “no” came prior to his hospitalizations. Allstate must’ve known there was something special about Winters because even after all he had been through, they came back and offered him the part once he was feeling better.
He may have been hesitant about selling insurance at first, but he told the Sioux City Journal he owes Allstate everything now: “They came to me knowing I was in the gutter and they breathed new life in me and helped restore confidence in myself.” Allstate has made different types of ads over the years, including a 2023 commercial featuring an annoying podcast expert. But Mayhem continues to be Allstate’s bread and butter, with Winters returning for new spots all the time, like a 2025 commercial that sees him as an annoying baseball dad who throws a bat right into a car’s windshield.
Dean Winters got his career back even if it’s with some limitations
Against the odds, Dean Winters got his career back on track following his near-death experience, but the whole ordeal has slowed him down a bit. He told the Sioux City Journal that he can no longer box despite loving it prior to his medical emergency. He also has to communicate with producers about what he’s able to actually perform. “When we did ‘Oz,’ I never said no to anything,” he said. “Now, I can’t walk without shoes on. I can’t walk barefoot.”
But if there’s any silver lining to take away from Winters’ brush with death it’s that it made him appreciate the business more. He has his share of audition horror stories and has spoken about failing to land parts in great movies like “Michael Clayton” and “Winter’s Bone.” Yet, after his surgeries, he’s more optimistic about whatever comes his way: “Right before I got hurt, I was in a negative place about the business. I wasn’t appreciating it for what it is. And now, I really appreciate the community, the actors, the writers and producers.”
Winters still regularly gets acting work, even outside of his Allstate Mayhem gigs. He was part of another Tina Fey project, playing Nick in “Girls5Eva” between 2021 and 2024, and he recently got to work with Spike Lee, playing a detective in his 2025 neo-noir crime thriller “Highest 2 Lowest.” Winters may have had a long journey to recovery, but his success after is the kind of arc one would expect to find in a Hollywood blockbuster.
