Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(23)

I hung up and told my parents the wedding was off. I didn’t say much more than that, and let my parents deal with the mess of cancellations and everything else. Moira stayed in Chicago, and I stayed in Hollywood and kept doing the play. Eventually I found out that Moira had returned to California with her mother. Reflecting on the death of her father, Moira had decided to become a nurse, so while taking acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Institute, she also was going to nursing school. But we didn’t see each other. We didn’t connect. We didn’t talk.

In late summer 1979, I found out that Robert Redford was making a big movie called Ordinary People, and I landed an audition but didn’t get called back. How could that be?! I was perfect for this role, I thought. Mr. Redford didn’t know what he was missing. The story takes place in Lake Forest, Illinois, right next to Highland Park where I grew up. This is me! I already know this character inside and out! I should be playing this part! I’d heard all these Hollywood urban myths, like the one where Steven Spielberg climbs over the fence at Universal Studios and gets his start in the film industry. I thought, Hey, I can do that too. As soon as he sees me, Mr. Redford will cast me. All I need is for him to see me face-to-face!

So I sneaked into the Warner Bros. lot, planted myself down on the couch in the office of casting director Penny Perry, and informed the receptionist that I wouldn’t leave until I could have an audition with Mr. Redford himself. The receptionist asked if I had an appointment. I said no, but explained the story. The receptionist went and told Penny Perry, and Penny came out and asked in a kind, but very flat voice: “Gary, what are you doing?”

“I know I wasn’t cast,” I said. “But I grew up in Highland Park. I’m perfect for this movie! I need to see Robert Redford.”

She sighed. “Sorry. You are not going to see Robert Redford.”

“Well, I’m not leaving. I’m going to sit right on this couch until I do.”

She crossed her arms. “Gary, don’t do this. If you don’t get off the couch, I’m going to have to call security.”

“Please! I grew up right there!”

Penny’s eyebrows lowered. “You auditioned. You didn’t get called back. Leave the building, or I will have you taken off the lot.”

I stared back at her. Silent. Hangdog. Reluctantly, I accepted the fact that Robert Redford would not be meeting Gary Sinise that afternoon. I slowly got up, utterly defeated, left the office, and walked out the front gate of the studios. I wasn’t doing very well in this town. The thought of heading back to Chicago sounded better and better. On the way home I came to the conclusion that had been brewing in me for a while now: Hollywood hates me.

Timothy Hutton landed the part. It was his first acting gig since playing a bit role in a movie when he was a kid plus a few small TV slots on Disney. Tim had never lived anywhere close to Highland Park, but for his performance in Ordinary People, he ended up winning an Oscar. He was only twenty when he won, the youngest male actor to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. And I had to admit, he was really good.

That’s how it goes in Hollywood.

And, nope, to this day I’ve never met Robert Redford.



Having decided Hollywood hated me, I started packing up to go home. A week before I left Los Angeles and headed back to Chicago, I called Moira and asked her to dinner at a jazz club on Cahuenga Boulevard called the Baked Potato. She agreed, perhaps only to say goodbye to me, and in the true spirit of the first few years of our relationship, we had dinner and sparks flew again. She was stunningly beautiful, as usual. We hadn’t seen each other or talked for a year, but we talked for a long time and sorted out a bunch of things. The electricity was palpable—and then during dinner I dumped my hot baked potato on my lap. Thankfully, nothing important was scalded.

I still needed to head back to Chicago. Hollywood might have offered no place for me, but Steppenwolf had made some good progress in my absence. While I was gone, they’d put on several successful shows, including a revival of The Glass Menagerie, which would be our final production in the Catholic school basement, the summer of 1979. In the fall, the theater would do productions of Waiting for Lefty and Say Goodnight Gracie at different theaters in Chicago. Then in early 1980, we were able to rent the larger space in the Hull House to make official the big move from Highland Park into the city. Steppenwolf had added some new members to the company too: Francis Guinan, Tom Irwin, Rondi Reed, Mary Copple, Mike Sassone, Glenne Headly, and John Mahoney. Mary and Mike would stay for only a few years.

Just before I left Hollywood, my agent landed me an audition for a bit part on the prime-time evening soap opera, Knots Landing, playing a teenager doing some underage drinking at a party on a beach. I got the part! My character’s name was Lee Maddox, and I had a couple of lines and a make-out scene with a girl while sitting beside a campfire. My very first time acting on film. Let’s just say it wasn’t From Here to Eternity. Certainly not enough to keep me in Los Angeles any longer.

Steppenwolf opened the 1980 season in March. I moved back with no place to live. I just showed up with my bags and said, “Hi, I’m back. What can I do?” Steppenwolf folded me back into the company immediately, although our current season was already under way, so I had no formal roles in plays for a while. Meanwhile, I did whatever I could to help. Park cars, mostly—splitting the ten-dollar-per-car parking fee between Steppenwolf and me. I also stepped back into Steppenwolf as a “substitute” actor—if someone needed to miss a performance for a night or a few weeks, I jumped into their role. I performed in Death of a Salesman and also Say Goodnight Gracie for a weekend, which turned out to be one of our biggest hits up to that point. We added a midnight series of plays, and I performed in one, The Collection by Harold Pinter. Steppenwolf wasn’t rolling in dough, but we could finally pay our actors a bit. Francis Guinan offered me space to sleep on the floor of his apartment. After a while, I found a small studio apartment a block away from the theater. Mice had moved in before me, and every night I heard the patter of tiny feet scamper across the countertops. Moira was still in California, finishing nursing school, but we talked regularly on the phone and wrote letters back and forth. The embers underneath the charred wood of our relationship roused to life and burned ever more brightly as time went on.