school play. This was a revelatory experience for me. I had three rowdy brothers—I could barely get a word in edgewise—but when I stood on the stage, everyone was quiet, their attention completely focused on me. When I delivered my heartfelt Thanksgiving monologue, I saw adults in the audience listening intently with tears in their eyes, and it astonished me that I could affect them on that emotional level. After that experience, I was hooked. I auditioned for as many plays as I could. The desire to connect with others in that meaningful way, to bring people with me, out of their everyday lives and into another space as I perform, that’s exciting and powerful. It has sustained me in my career for over thirty years.
We were close to nature in Westport. The sea was nearby, and if I was good my mom used to let me camp out in the woods and eat Kentucky Fried Chicken with my girlfriends (that being the staple diet of woodland survivalists). Sometimes we’d even spend the night out there, unless someone started talking about murderers or ghosts, which would send us running back to the house, shrieking loudly enough to wake the dead.
So when my dad announced that Shell was transferring us to Houston, land of 64-ounce Slurpees and steaks the size of hubcaps, we were horrified. My brothers threatened to run away from home, I retreated sullenly into my books, and my parents’ arguments broke out into full-scale war. The word “divorce” was overheard on more than one occasion, leaving us kids huddled in the corners of the house, drawing straws to see who got to live where. My mom usually got her way, but this time the decision had been made by a higher power—Shell Oil Company—and if my dad wanted to get ahead in his career, then he had to go where they sent him.
So my mom stopped eating and started crying all the time. She clung to us and kissed our heads as if we were all she had left. Her desire to stay was more than a fondness for Weston. She’d always had an amazing sixth sense. It wasn’t uncommon for her to tell one of us to get the phone before it rang or to dream about things that would come to pass. She was sure that some terrible storm was brewing and that we were sailing right into it. My dad didn’t want to hear about it; he just started packing.
My dad, Jim, was eighteen years old when he was stabbed, right in the heart. He was a student at the University of Southern California and used to drive around in a red Corvette Stingray. He’d been walking to Van De Camp’s drive-in with some friends when they got jumped by a Mexican gang. My dad was walking in front and got the worst of it. The gang leader’s wife had been cheating on him with some gringos; my dad and his friends were in the wrong place at the wrong time when the leader went looking for blood. When my dad reached the hospital, he became one of the first recipients of open-heart surgery. Back then they hadn’t invented the small, vertical chest incision, so they cut him in half and left him with a long scar that looked like a magician’s trick gone wrong.
The surgeons saved his life twice that day. The first time with the heart surgery—he appreciated that—but he was bitter about the second. Since he was laid up in the hospital, he couldn’t ship out to the Korean War with his buddies. None of them came back. Dad had been sent to military school from the age of five, and there was an expectation that he would follow in the footsteps of his father, Charlie, who’d received a Purple Heart and the French Croix De Guerre in World War I. He was hit by shrapnel in the left lung while leading a French-American force in the Meuse-Argonne offensive.
Charlie was a second-generation Irish immigrant, born in Boston to a well-to-do family. He was a real-estate tycoon, a respected surgeon, an all-round society type with one large skeleton in the closet.
He’d bought a large parcel of desert land in Palm Springs and fitted it out with a trailer. There were no neighbors, no passersby, no one to come between Grandpa Charlie and the trunk-load of whiskey that he would use to drink himself into oblivion. When he was done with his binge he’d dry out for a few days, head back home, and go on with life as usual until the trailer, like the nesting ground of a migratory bird, would irresistibly draw him back.
My mom, Hildegard, was, and still is, a stunningly beautiful woman. Born in Germany, she lived through World War II being evacuated from one small village to the next. She was five years old when Hitler passed through town in one of his flamboyant, goose-stepping parades. Pushing through the crowd to see what all the fuss was about, she found herself face-to-face with the man himself, who passed her a little swastika flag. She turned to run home and show her mother, but as she did she fell and the sharp end of the flag cut her chin open. She decided it was a bad omen and that Hitler was not to be trusted. To this day she still has what she calls her “Hitler scar.”
And, of course, she was right about Hitler. He led Germany to ruin as well as her family. They lost everything when the Nazis evacuated them and took over their home as a base camp.
As a little girl my mom sometimes had to steal cabbages so they had enough to eat, and most evenings found her walking the streets searching for her papa until she found him asleep in a bar or singing with his drinking buddies. Both wartime poverty and her father’s drinking were deeply humiliating for her.
When she was older, she was sponsored by a fiance to come to America and work as a dental hygienist. That relationship fell through, and she ended up living with the owners of the Brown Derby, the famous Hollywood restaurant. She worked on Mae West’s teeth and dated William Frawley, who played Fred Mertz in
Even in middle age, when a future governor of California tried to hit on her in their shared Germanic tongue, she gave him short shrift. It was at my birthday party, and she came over to ask me who he was.
“Mom, that’s the Terminator.”
“I don’t care who he is, he’s a very rude man. You should have heard him. He’s been living in America too long.”
When my mom’s friends tried to set her up with my father, she wasn’t interested and tried to push him onto another friend. But my dad can be determined when he sets his mind to something, and eventually he won her over with his Gregory Peck–style good looks and a ride in his Corvette Stingray.
My mom gave me the desire to improve my lot in life with style. She’s an incredibly hard worker and fast learner. She took an unfinished education and ended up the manager of Giorgio’s, one of the swankiest stores in Beverly Hills.
But back then, when my parents first got married, they were poor. My dad started at the bottom, working at a gas station, and slowly worked his way up the ladder at Shell one rung at a time.
I get my determination from my dad, my need to prove myself, to show the world that I can make it on my own without any handouts. But I’ve always been mindful of the toll that success took on both him and our family. He was always away, and when he was at home he was tense, high-strung, and not easy to be around. As a parent I guess you fall back on what you know, and he had been raised in a brutal military school and expected us to fall in line like those little Von Trapp kids in
When I say that my dad was stubborn and determined, I mean it. He had a hangover one morning when he was in his early forties, after a New Year’s party with his work buddies, and swore he’d never drink again. Alcohol was his father’s demon and he didn’t plan on making it his. To this day he still hasn’t touched a drop of the stuff.
Back in Houston it was still dark in the mornings when we’d jump on the bus that would take us to our new schools. We’d start sweating at nine in the morning and finish at sunset. The only place to swim was the bayou, which was teeming with venomous water moccasins. Swatting at mosquitoes, I used to watch the crawdads swarm all over the gutters. We used to jokingly call Houston “Satan’s shack.”
It was October 22, 1973, and two of my brothers had gotten into a fight with my dad about homework. Patrick was a rebellious fourteen and Jimmy was a year younger. My dad was always tightly wound at the end of the day and had no patience for kids who didn’t follow the rules in his house. A futile, frustrating argument broke out.
“We’re outa here!” Patrick said, slamming open the screen door and storming out of the house. From the table I watched him tie his blue bandana around his head and grab his bike from the lawn, Jimmy right on his heels.
“Where do you think you’re going?” our dad yelled.
Over his shoulder, Patrick shouted, “7-Eleven!”
My brothers raced off down the street. Jimmy pulled ahead, laughing, with Patrick rushing to catch up. They were neck-and-neck for a block or two, and then Jimmy took the lead again, younger by a year, but faster. At the
