25 Things You Don’t Know About Me
The Palm Springs star shares his sunny disposition with Us
1. My first job was painting houses — and not very well. I got my first two professional acting jobs from opencall auditions in NYC: the Broadway revival of Hair and the Broadway company of Grease.
2. I was playing Danny Zuko [in Grease on Broadway] when the movie came out.
3. I’ve done 10 Broadway shows — five musicals and five plays.
4. The moment I realized I’d made it was after the packed premiere of my first movie,
The Idolmaker, at Radio City Music Hall. A mob of girls grabbed my tie and nearly strangled me. I thought,
“This is different… and kind of scary.”
5. I’m really shy.
6. My first car was a 1968 Cougar XR7 convertible, which I bought very used. It had a lot of electrical problems.
7. I have an economics degree from Tufts University.
8. One thing I learned from [my major] was that I wasn’t very interested in business.
9. Over the years, people have insisted I was Robby Benson or Harry Hamlin. Recently, a small but vocal group was convinced I’m Billy Bob Thornton. I’m in good company!
10. I can do pretty good impressions of some people who are long since departed. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people can tell if the impressions are any good.
11. I can speak gibberish in any number of languages. It’s been very helpful on several occasions.
12. The best advice I’ve received is that 90 percent of life is showing up.
13. I have an Irish and a United States passport.
14. I have an extraordinary offscreen wife, Paula, and have had some pretty great onscreen wives, including Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen
and Michelle Pfeiffer.
15. I broke my eardrum diving off a 60-foot cliff when I was 16. It healed.
16. I won $500,000 on Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire for the Alzheimer’s Association.
17. Years ago, as I was leaving Dublin’s Clarence Hotel, which is owned by U2,
Bono held the door for me. I really tried to say something — anything! — but I was dumbstruck, so I gave a feeble nod and kept going.
18. Jack Lemmon gave me my first set of golf clubs, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
19. I’ve made three hole in ones.
20. I met my wife [in our] freshman year of college. We’ve been married for 37 years.
21. Our son, James, and I had our appendixes out on the same date — 40 years apart.
22. Our daughter, Kathryn, made her Broadway debut in a theater I’d worked in years before. I’d brought her for Take Your Daughter to Work Day.
23. The only time I ever played hockey on an ice rink and wore the full equipment was at Madison Square Garden, with former N.Y. Rangers [in front of] 13,000 people. I didn’t have a heart attack.
24. I love tools and building stuff.
25. All this stuff about my eyebrows has been a complete surprise. I grew up being self-conscious about my lips.