There and Back Again

by Sean Astin

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

  I’d hang up the phone, walk up to the service truck, and say, “Can I have another burrito, please? Thanks. And can I get some chocolate bars, too?” Then I’d sit there and stuff my face.

  I’d use food to anesthetize myself. I didn’t want to be there. I had sold out, and I felt bad about it. I felt bad about myself. I remember my agents visiting the set at a warehouse where we were filming out in Valencia one day, and we sat down for lunch, and I had a big plate of food in front of me, but I couldn’t eat. Not a bite.

  “Sean, you’re not eating anything, man. What’s the problem?” somebody said.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Well, that made no sense, since eating was what I did best. Day and night. Eat, eat, eat. At that moment though, I couldn’t eat, because these were the guys who got me to sell out. I blamed them, not myself, so when I was with them, I lost my appetite. At least when I’d sold out to Marc Rocco on Where the Day Takes You, I could say, Okay, this is the price of compromise and screwing with my integrity. I’m going to recognize the righteousness of the decision that guy made and create value because it’s a damn good movie. But not now. Now I was in a movie I didn’t respect, making obscene amounts of money (five times what a teacher makes, and teachers do infinitely more important work)—and it just felt wrong. Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m as greedy as the next guy. I want to be compensated for my work, and generally I feel as though I’m entitled to whatever I can earn. However, the degree to which I feel entitled to that earning power ebbs and flows with the quality of the work being done. In other words, it’s a lot easier to feel like you’ve earned the money when you’re proud of the work, and I wasn’t proud of this. I also resented that the power brokers on the other side of the table had played better chess than I had. In that sense, I was merely a poor loser.

  Nevertheless, I remained committed to the work and tried to do the best job I could do. I actually got injured while filming a scene that called for my character to run and jump on a wheelbarrow, and then catch a bowl over his shoulder while diving headfirst. I was still a young kid and I’d been pretty fit my whole life, so I didn’t think the stunt would be a problem. But this was the first time I’d let myself get out of shape, and even become borderline fat, so it wasn’t as easy as I had imagined. We shot five or six takes, and on what would prove to be the last one, I fell and cut my head open, just above my eye. But it was nothing too serious, and the next day I was back at work, where a crash helmet was waiting with my name on it. A little joke from the studio.

  So I was “earning” my salary. And yet I was just out of my depth. Pauly had his thing going, and that’s what excited the studio the most. That and the presence of Brendan Fraser, an Adonis—he looked like Marlon Brando on his best day—who had quickly established that he could be effective as a comedic or dramatic actor. Just as, even now, he can bounce between Oscar-caliber fare like Gods and Monsters and harmless trifle like George of the Jungle or The Mummy, Brendan could shift gears from important work to disposable work, and he could do it with an elegance that I found admirable. He could do a thoughtful movie like School Ties—and then do this thing. All without missing a beat or wallowing in self-doubt. I could see that Brendan was different. This was a guy who was creating power at the studio, and to some extent I was awed by his ability to do so. I thought I was supposed to be doing that, too, but instead I felt trapped in this role, between these two other actors who clearly were the focus of the movie and the studio’s attention. The thing that made me right for the role—a certain quiet intensity, an everyman quality—was precisely what made me dissatisfied with it. I looked at Brendan and thought, I’m not going to be that guy, the leading man. And I looked at Pauly and thought, I’m not gonna be that guy, either, the … well, whatever Pauly is.

  I was just an honest kind of actor. Not long ago, my father told me, “Try not to use your authenticity in service of a subpar script.” That was the first time he ever articulated it to me. In hindsight, I think that was the source of my discontent, the reason I was fat and unhappy.

  Try not to use your authenticity in service of a subpar script.

  A simple little gem of advice. Unfortunately, like so many actors, I’ve not always had the wisdom to heed it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  During one of my first visits to Indiana, while spending time with Christine’s family, her Grandma Schroeder offered a thoughtful notion: “You know, Sean, you really ought to make a movie around here. Sam Elliott did Prancer in the next town over! We’d get to see you kids more often.”

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  “That would be wonderful, Grandma. But it doesn’t really work that way. You sort of have to go where the jobs are.”

  She nodded. “Okay—but I still think you should make one here.”

  I love Christine’s family. It may sound trite, but there is a peacefulness to the rural Midwest that I find very calming, soothing. Celebrity doesn’t seem to mean as much; certainly it isn’t the coin of the realm the way it is in Hollywood. Still, I never expected to spend time in Indiana for reasons that were anything other than personal. So imagine my surprise when less than two months after Christine and I were married, I was asked to read a script for a movie titled Rudy, set at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.

  Now, I was a West Coast kid, so I didn’t know a whole heck of a lot about Notre Dame, aside from its fight song “Cheer, cheer, cheer for Old Notre Dame…” and the fact that Johnny O’Keefe, who lived down the street from me when I was growing up, used to watch college football every Saturday and liked Notre Dame a lot. But to me, college football was UCLA, not because I went to many Bruins games (I didn’t), but mainly because from my house I could always hear the school’s marching band practicing. We lived that close to the campus. (Not only that, but my aunt and uncle were professors at UCLA in the department of education, and every year we’d get Christmas presents from the college bookstore.)

  Reading the script, however, was a revelation. It was like I was reading my own life.

  Everything about Rudy’s mentality matched the way I looked at the world. Of course, Rudy’s story and my story were vastly different, but in terms of his ethos, it felt like I was reading about an alternate version of myself. In Little League, for example, I spent a lot of time on the bench, waiting, begging to get in the game. Even though my parents were famous and made very good money, their attitudes and values created in me a sense of connection to working-class people. That may sound condescending or convenient, but if you think that, well, you don’t know me. When my mom got remarried, it was to a soldier. Sure, he was a sergeant, first class, but he was “real people.” When my dad remarried, he was fortunate to find a woman who exuded a kind of nobility and an understanding of all people. I’ve always admired the working people I’ve met; everyone’s work—from the garbageman to the rocket scientist—seems valid and honorable to me. So my mind and spirit were primed to read Angelo Pizzo’s brilliant screenplay about Daniel “Rudy” Reuttiger.

  Rudy was a working-class kid who talked his way into Notre Dame, an elite private college, and eventually onto the school’s storied football team, even though he was neither a great student nor a great athlete. Rudy was an underdog, and I found it easy to identify with him.

  The movie would be directed by David Anspaugh. He and Angelo Pizzo were the same writing/directing team that had done such an impressive job of capturing small-town life in Indiana in the 1950s with the beautiful basketball film, Hoosiers. Like Hoosiers, Rudy was a fact-based, almost achingly earnest story; in lesser hands, both stories might have fallen victim to hackneyed clichés and stereotypes. But Hoosiers remains one of the best sports movies ever made, a nearly perfect tale of David rising up to defeat Goliath, told on a simple, heartfelt, human scale. Reading the script for Rudy, I knew it had the potential to be every inch the movie that Hoosiers is, not least because it was being made by Angelo and David. With every p
age I liked it more and more—it was just screamingly obvious that this would be a really good movie—and I became so excited that my fingers kept slipping off the pages. Rudy, I knew, was exactly the right prescription for the malaise that had set in while I was making Encino Man. I would be the star, the lead, the hero. And I knew I could do it.

  I was so relieved that this wasn’t an ensemble film. Rudy was the title character, the role a tour de force for any actor lucky enough to land the job. I was determined to be that actor, to not let anything, including petty squabbles over compensation, stand in the way. After meeting with the director, I got the sense that he liked me and that the creative people behind the project—as well as the titular character himself, Daniel Reuttiger—thought I was perfect for the part. The head of production, on the other hand, wanted Chris O’Donnell. This was no small obstacle. Like me, Chris, who I’ve come to know pretty well and admire a lot, was a young actor (we were both in our early twenties) whose stock in trade was an earnest, boy-next-door quality. And like me, Chris was on the smallish side—physically correct for the part of Rudy. Unlike me, Chris had just seen his career take flight. In the previous year Chris had costarred alongside Brendan Fraser in School Ties and Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. The latter performance had earned him a Golden Globe nomination. It’s fair to say that Chris was the hotter actor by far. Knowing that I was the preferred candidate of the writers and director, and that the role was mine to lose, I waded carefully into the waters of negotiation.

  I had just made $250,000 on Encino Man, so I was surprised when they offered me roughly half that amount to play Rudy. After all, I’d be carrying the movie. Now, I realize that while it had major studio backing, Rudy was designed as a small, personal film, one that would tug at the audience’s heart rather than grab it by the jugular. Those types of movies don’t necessarily become blockbusters. But the budget for Rudy was at least double the budget for Encino Man. Hoosiers grossed $60 million domestically, while Encino Man grossed nearly $40 million. So it wasn’t a stretch to believe that Rudy could perform just as well. At the least, small movies can be successful; otherwise the studios wouldn’t produce them. They can win awards, satisfy audiences, and make money, too. Although probably not as much money. Personally, I didn’t really care. I was told the offer was what it was, and it wouldn’t go any higher. The job was almost mine to accept or reject. If I played hardball, they’d make a deal with Chris O’Donnell.

  Now, I’m not sure how much most people care about the art of the deal in these situations, but I’m happy to share a level of detail about my experiences because I think folks can learn from it. Obviously, we’re not talking about chicken feed here—$125,000 is a lot of dough. Never mind that we pay half our salary to the government and ten percent to an agent, ten percent to a manager, and a little more to a publicist, business manager/accountant, physical trainer, etc. It’s still a lot of money. But that’s not how you think in these situations. Showbiz is one of the only fields I can think of where what you’ve made previously can prove to be only a minor factor in determining what you might/maybe/should/ought to/probably will get paid this time. How much they want you relative to how much they want someone else, while factoring in everyone’s availability and the risk of possibly losing you or your competition, means much more to the bottom line than does past salary.

  Christine and I were fresh back from our honeymoon, in love and feeling great. I was in excellent physical condition, running four miles a day and thinking pretty clearly all of the time. It was summer, so I could usually be found in our pool pondering business and creative issues. The head of production at Tri-Star then was Marc Platt, an extremely intelligent and proud family man. He was also a shrewd executive. I knew, or at least believed, that Kevin Mischer, the junior executive who was “covering” or championing Rudy, was in my corner. Kevin was a good friend of my agent, Josh Lieberman (I probably would not have played Rudy if I had stayed at the smaller agency at that point in my career). Kevin was an executive I had worked with on Toy Soldiers, and he would go on to have a very bright career—despite having worked with me twice!

  I’m half kidding, but I’m pretty sure that’s how folks think: These movies grossed X number of dollars; therefore, nobody wants to see Sean carrying a picture. Of course, everything can change with a hit. All things being equal, I’d rather feel that a studio executive sees me as a good-luck charm for his career, rather than a two-strike stink bomb that.

  To the best of my recollection, the way it was presented to me was this: Everyone wants you but Marc Platt. He insists that you “test,” and he swears he’s not budging off the $125,000.

  I was in no mood to risk a game of poker, so I settled for it. Actually, that’s not quite accurate, for I didn’t consider it to be “settling.” I wanted the part. I needed it. Some jobs you take for your wallet; others you take for your soul. Rudy fell into the second category. And as Dominic Monaghan would admonish me years later during the making of The Lord of the Rings, sometimes you have to have a little perspective. Dom, who played the part of Merry, wears his hardscrabble Manchester (England) roots on his sleeve, and more than once he rather wisely pointed out to me, “You know what people earn in the real world, man? We are so fucking lucky!”

  Absolutely right. We are lucky. But as with any line of work, it’s not what you earn that counts; it’s what you keep. I figure if I’m going to take the time to write a book, I might as well be honest about aspects of the movie industry that aren’t ordinarily discussed candidly, such as compensation and representation. The numbers I’ve mentioned are not insignificant; to most people, $125,000 sounds like a lot of money—and it is. But playing Rudy was now clearly not a decision about money. It was about my destiny. Thoughts flickered through my mind about old Hollywood screen tests and the building of stars from within the studio system. I envisioned my house in an earlier time, surrounded by orange groves, with crop dusters or biplanes flying overhead rather than private jets. I calculated that Marc Platt could rest comfortably knowing that if he didn’t get his first choice, Chris, he would at least have saved the studio a pretty penny. I felt emboldened by knowing the creative auspices supported me, and so, the gauntlet having been thrown down, I accepted the challenge.

  At a certain point, of course, it really doesn’t matter. It all becomes Monopoly money. But at that stage of my career, I hadn’t accomplished anything remotely close to this. I’d never had this kind of opportunity. I was constantly trying to make enough money to carry me through the next six months—to bankroll a film I wanted to direct, or to put myself through college. And to simply pay the mortgage. In this case, though, there was no debating about whether to fight for the role, or to hold out for more money. This was a defining moment in my career. I felt like the universe was conspiring to make it happen. I was meant to play Rudy—it was as simple as that.

  Accepting the financial terms of the deal was only part of the process. I also had to agree again to change my body for the part. I was simultaneously nervous and emboldened by this stipulation, since by my estimation I was pretty fit. Christine and I had gotten married, and I’d run off all the weight I’d gained during Encino Man so that I’d look reasonably attractive while standing next to my beautiful wife in the wedding photos. When I did my screen test for Rudy, I weighed 135 pounds, and the studio executives were less than thrilled with my newly svelte appearance. They offered me the role on the condition that I gain ten to fifteen pounds of muscle before the start of principal photography. In their opinion I was too skinny, too waiflike, to ever be believable as a football player at Notre Dame—even a famously small football player who made the team as a walk-on.

  It seemed to me an ironic turn of events, since I’d been so fat in Encino Man that Disney didn’t even want to put me on the promotional poster. Talk about embarrassing! That movie cost six or seven million dollars to make and grossed forty million. But my focus wasn’t on using the forty-million-dollar success story of Encino Man to ge
t the next acting job. Instead, I had turned my focus to directing the short film I’d been promised, and on building my own production company. Cashing in on the success of Encino Man, with all of the emotional baggage I carried from that movie, failed to appeal to me. So instead of hiring a personal trainer and trying to sculpt my body in the way that Hollywood demands, I was satisfied with just getting skinny in time for the wedding.

  Now, though, I was ready and willing to do whatever was asked of me. I agreed to put on the weight, and pretty soon I was working out daily at the Sony gym, pounding weights, pushing myself harder than ever. Interestingly, I was there at the same time that Tom Hanks was losing the weight he’d gained to play a paunchy baseball coach in A League of Their Own, in preparation for his Oscar-winning role in Philadelphia. I’d make jokes as I passed him on my way out of the gym to my third or fourth high-protein meal of the day: “Hey, Tom, want me to pick up a burger for you?”

  His response? Something along these lines: “Screw you!”

  In so many ways, acting is an intensely weird, narcissistic endeavor. It requires immense self-involvement, the belief that people want to watch you perform, play. It’s like athletics without the competition. And as in sports, there is an assumption, a pact between performer and spectator, that the actor not only will give his best, but also, in most cases, will look his best. It seems part of the contract. While it may sound silly and shallow to suggest that most folks don’t go to the movies to watch unattractive people, it’s also probably true. At five-foot-seven with a body that does not naturally lend itself to washboard abs, and a face that is more cherubic than chiseled, I know I am not the classic Hollywood leading man. But there is a certain level of fitness and attractiveness that I can attain, and that I suppose a studio has a right to expect its stars to have. (For me, The Lord of the Rings is the rare exception to the rule. In those films Peter Jackson’s expectation, based on Tolkien’s writing, was that I look less like a leading man, not more; thus, Samwise Gamgee’s portly appearance.)