Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(55)

Steppenwolf opened the show in Chicago in spring 2000, and it did well. That summer we took the play to London for a two-week run, where it was a big hit. Then on April 8, 2001, we opened it on Broadway, where we played 145 performances at the Royale Theater, closing on July 29. We received mixed reviews, although the New York Times described my performance as “a white-hot perpetual motion machine,” which was certainly how my body felt. Steppenwolf won the Tony Award for Best Play Revival, and I received a Tony nomination for Best Actor.

The date we closed the show became key. In that last stretch on Broadway, we were contracted for a six-month run, which would have taken us to September 16, 2001. But toward the end of our run, ticket sales began to fall off. The show required a big cast. It was expensive to produce and difficult to perform, and tiredness dogged everybody. Shortly after the Tony Awards, I sat down with the Broadway producers and discussed moving up the show’s closing date. By doing this we would encourage more sales, because then everybody rushes to see a great play before it’s over. Our plan worked. Ticket sales improved for those final weeks, and we were eventually able to recoup our costs.

Moira and the children stayed with me in New York at the end of the run. After the show closed, we rented a cottage on Nantucket Island for a few weeks’ vacation. Members of our extended family stayed with us too, and every day we played on the beach and window-shopped around town. We rented motor scooters and explored the island’s dirt roads. We fished and sailed on the open sea. Each night we feasted on ice cream. We didn’t know it, but this was the calm before the storm.



In mid-August 2001, my family and I returned to Los Angeles. The kids started school again—Sophie in eighth grade, Mac in sixth, and Ella in fifth. Moira had remained unbending in her sobriety for three and a half years, and family life was peaceful, healthy, and fun.

One morning in September, about six thirty, as Moira helped the kids get ready for school, our phone rang. I was still sleeping. Terry Kinney, who lived in New York, was on the line. Simultaneously, Moira turned on the TV.

“Hi, Terry,” I said.

“Gary, are you watching TV right now?!”

“I just got up, buddy, what’s going on?”

“Two planes have hit the World Trade Center. The tops of both buildings are on fire.”

I rushed to the TV.

Terry’s words spilled out: “We’re under attack, Gary! Terrorists have crashed airplanes into those buildings. It’s bad. Really bad!”

Every American alive then remembers that moment and can answer the inevitable question: Where were you when you first heard the news?

I stared in shock and disbelief—along with the entire country, the entire world—as smoke poured from the tops of both buildings. Horrified, we watched on live TV as people leapt to their deaths from the upper floors of the Trade Center. The report soon arrived that a third airplane had crashed into the Pentagon. About twenty minutes later, a fourth airplane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We later heard it was United Flight 93, seemingly bound for the White House (the target was ultimately determined by the 9/11 Commission Report to be the Capitol Building). The people on board Flight 93 had discovered that terrorists were crashing planes into buildings, and the passengers had courageously yet fatefully chosen to take back the plane. We watched the South Tower collapse and crumble in a fury of dust and smoke. Then the North Tower fell. Horror enveloped us all.

The scenes that played out on live TV were surreal, shocking. Schools closed all over the nation, and any children already on campuses were soon sent home. I didn’t know what to think or feel or do. That morning I was scheduled to go golfing with an old friend from high school days, and I called to cancel, but then I thought maybe my head would clear if I could just get outside and breathe some fresh air. Maybe I could make sense of what had happened.

I jumped into my car and headed to the range. The airspace over Los Angeles usually buzzes with planes and helicopters, but by then all the nation’s air traffic had been grounded, and the skies were eerily quiet. My buddy hadn’t yet seen the news that the towers had fallen, so I filled him in and we tried to carry on a normal conversation and play golf, but soon we stopped the round.

Like most Americans that day, I felt adrift. I didn’t know what to do, where to turn. Life for every American had radically changed, but the change was only beginning to sink in. Only a few hours earlier, my biggest concerns bounced from what my next movie project might be to what we might eat for dinner. Halfway through my golf game on the morning of 9/11, it hit me that normalcy was no longer possible. I thought, What am I doing? I can’t play golf today. I gotta go home to be with my family.

While driving home to Malibu through one of the canyons, I clicked on the radio news. Newscasters speculated that today’s attacks were only the beginning of more attacks to come. The reality of the morning sank in even deeper. Our country was under attack. Vulnerable. Thousands of innocent people had been killed that day. More horror lay ahead. I couldn’t tell you exactly why I did this—perhaps in solidarity, defiance, tribute—but I rolled down my window, stuck out my arm and made a fist, and held it high. Tears welled up in my eyes as I still listened to the news. For some time as I drove along, I held my arm outstretched, as high as it would reach.

At home, we glued ourselves to the TV. President George W. Bush had been speaking to a classroom of schoolchildren in Florida when he first received word of the attacks. He soon boarded a plane and then touched down at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana where he briefly addressed reporters. By 8:30 p.m. Eastern time, now back in Washington, DC, he addressed the nation from the Oval Office. He was clearly emotional, heartbroken. “A great people has been moved to defend a great nation,” he said. He’d just been handed the distinction of being president on the day America had suffered the worst attack on our homeland in history. Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, had been horrible, but Pearl Harbor had been an attack on our military, whereas September 11, 2001, was an attack on our civilian population. This day was unprecedented.