Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(46)
They call these climb-and-drop maneuvers “parabolas”—and we were set to do forty of them, one right after another. We all wore flight suits with two pockets on the chest. In each pocket was a little plastic barf bag. When the time came for the first parabola, the plane plunged, and we unstrapped ourselves from our seats. Sure enough, we all flew around inside the padded walls of the plane, gliding through the air like we were swimming in space. Ron Howard experienced these parabolas along with us. Everything was going well, but by the time we got to forty, Ron piped up and asked if we could do another ten. Unfortunately for me, at forty-two I needed my barf bag. I rode out the remaining eight parabolas with a green face.
The extra ten parabolas weren’t all about fun and games. Ron was sincerely trying to determine if he could put cameras and a set inside the plane and shoot the weightless scenes in the zero-gravity conditions. Our ten extra maneuvers convinced him it could be done. NASA supported the project and approved the request. So for two weeks, the astronaut-actors shot all their weightless scenes up inside the plane in twenty-five-second intervals, incredibly difficult to do. All my scenes happened down on the ground with the final moments shot with NASA flight director Gene Kranz (played by Ed Harris) in Mission Control, which was recreated back at Universal Studios.
Apollo 13 came out on June 30, 1995, and it was a big hit, garnering stellar reviews and eventually bringing in more than $350 million worldwide. It was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture, and won two, along with a host of other awards. Kevin, Tom, Ed, Bill, Kathleen Quinlan (who played Jim Lovell’s wife), and I won a SAG together with the rest of the actors for Outstanding Performance by a Cast.
When we finished shooting Apollo 13, it was an explosive time in my career, and I was asked to play the lead role in Truman for HBO. I didn’t know much about Harry Truman before the project, but the script was based on the Pulitzer-winning book by David McCullough, so I read that, then started poring over source material, reading more books, and watching documentary film footage. I spent hours in the archives of the Truman Library in Kansas City, studying his speeches.
After Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in office toward the end of World War II, Harry Truman took over as president. He made the difficult decision to use the first atomic bomb, the only world leader ever to use nuclear weapons in war. Truman later desegregated the military, implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe after World War II, recognized Israel as a state in 1948, and created the Truman Doctrine—a major policy designed to counter the rise of communist Russia’s ideology and expansion (in many ways marking the start of the Cold War). He led the nation during the Korean War.
Two big questions I had were how was I ever going to look like Harry Truman, and how could I age from early thirties to late sixties within the scope of a movie? I needed to create a believable impression of a historical figure, and plenty of pictures of Truman still exist. The producers hired Gordon Smith, a Canadian makeup artist, to design a full prosthetic, silicon-gel face for me—from scalp to chin—as well as hiring Benjamin Robin and Russell Cate to apply the hair and makeup. (Ben would go on to do several movies and TV shows for me in the coming years and became a dear friend.) For this production, special wigs were made, and I needed to shave my head because Truman had little on top. (Right after Truman, I shot a part in Albino Alligator, starring Matt Dillon and Faye Dunaway. If you look closely, you see my hair is barely coming in from when I shaved it last for Truman.) It took four hours each morning to get me into the prosthetic, hair, and makeup, and another hour each night to remove it all. We’d shoot for twelve to thirteen hours in between, six days a week, for thirty-five days total. At one point, well into the shooting schedule, we were shooting in the replica of the Oval Office at the Truman Library. It was nearly seven o’clock on a Sunday morning, and after weeks of such long days, I looked around the room and saw the crew was dead tired. I was exhausted myself. In the makeup trailer, while getting my prosthetic makeup removed, the producers came in to discuss the call for Monday. I stopped them and said, “I think we are going to take a day off tomorrow. Everyone is completely out of gas. These hours are killing us. Time out. I’ll be taking a break tomorrow.” The producers left immediately to stop printing the call sheet for the next day. When I eventually emerged from the makeup trailer to go home, the crew was standing outside and broke into applause. Word had gotten out that we were taking a day off. Yes, Truman proved a grueling project, but it was a great story and well worth it.
In the end, I felt I fully inhabited the character. The movie ended up garnering strong reviews and winning a slew of awards, including an Emmy for Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television. I was nominated for an Emmy and won the Golden Globe for Best Actor and the Screen Actors Guild Award. I felt overwhelmed by how my life had changed. Certainly I was grateful for how things were going.
Ron Howard’s next movie was a crime thriller called Ransom starring Mel Gibson, Rene Russo, Liev Schreiber, and Donnie Wahlberg. Ron asked me to play the villain—a detective gone bad named Jimmy Shaker who kidnaps Mel’s young son and holds him for ransom. I read the script and despised this character so much I turned down the part. My children were little at the time; the villain is a psychopath, and I hated the idea of anyone stealing children. He was also written as older than me, so I had trouble seeing myself doing it. I auditioned for a couple of other projects, then started second-guessing myself. Ron Howard specifically asked me to play this part. How could I turn down Ron Howard? But I’d already said no. Was it too late?