Children of Paradise

When a casting director for Terminator 2 spotted him hanging out in front of The Boys and Girls Club of Pasadena, about all Eddie had going for him were his looks--stark and epicene, the invulnerable insolence of a grievous angel--and a long gaze up the well of perspective: Things couldn't get worse than he'd already seen. Growing up in an atmosphere of routine disappointment, he expected little when he was asked to audition for the part of Schwarzenegger's pal in what would eventually play as a kind of cyberpunk Of Mice and Men. Even after discovering that the film was T2, Eddie accepted the prospect of starring opposite Hollywood's biggest sauer-braten eater with the equanimity reserved for winning a two-dollar scratch-off game. "I wasn't really worried for the first reading because I didn't think I had a chance of getting the role."

The extent of Eddie's acting experience to that point was a fifth grade school play in which he carried a box onstage. But somebody saw something, because after three auditions he got the part. "After they told me, me and my aunt and uncle got in the car and we're hitting on the roof and the doors, hollering like mad. We stopped at a gas station and we were holding hands in a circle and all these people were looking at us--I think they wanted to shoot us. We were jumping up and down, totally stoked, so ... that's my life story."

Or at least the most recent chapter of it. Whatever victimization child stardom may visit on him, Eddie got more than his share growing up in the industrial obscurity of Glendale. He was raised by his mother until "personal difficulties" (in his uncle's words) prompted her to surrender custody of him to her brother and sister, with whom he was living when he was spotted at the Pasadena club. "I got into a lot of fights... I don't think I ever met my Dad," Eddie acknowledges, bridging a vast expanse of rough emotional territory with very few words. But when the subject of his mother surfaces, there is a vegetables-on-the-plate quality to his reproach: "We, uh, just got finished with a court situation with my mother. Now we're finished with that. If I could...could I stop talking about this?"

"We had been living together, all of us, including Eddie's mother, from the December to April before T2," Eddie's uncle, Sean, explains. "His mom was having some problems. Eddie's a really great kid--it had nothing to do with him. So she turned him over to us--me and my sister. That was a year and a half ago. Just after T2, things got real bad." It seems that after Eddie was cast in T2, a custody battle followed between his aunt, his uncle and his mother. (It is not hard to imagine Mrs. Furlong in court, suddenly assuming the shape of a balanced, responsible mom, the way the liquidy cyborg cop in T2 suddenly became Linda Hamilton, but who can say?) "Eddie bounces back really well," says Sean, recounting the vitriolic court battle with visible discomfort. "That's one of the things that makes him a really good actor."

Asked if the past ever puts Eddie in a funk, Sean is unconvincing in his denial, but sanguine about his methods. "Well, he really doesn't get down that much. He stays very even. But we talk. We talk a lot. It's really important to hear what kids have to say and treat them not like kids. Hormones don't just affect your sex drive--they affect your emotions as well, how you respond to things. One of the things both Nancy and I try to do to keep things normal is we've resigned ourselves to the fact that holding down regular jobs is just not practical. We both went to Seattle when Eddie had to shoot there. We cook dinner at the hotel instead of eating out all the time. It just helps to keep things normal."

Out in an arroyo near Eddie's house, I'm making motorcycle noises because Eddie can't remember if the bike he just bought with some of the money he made doing Terminator 2 is a two-stroker or a four.

"Must be a two-stroker," he maintains. While the thrill of riding the motorbike occupies his imagination these days, the pedal-powered bicycle we're wheeling through a gully in the arroyo is a reminder of the way things were. "Mainly I have to try not to be big-headed," Eddie reasons, relieving me of the bicycle, which has a flat tire. "And I admit, sometimes I get that way. I don't express it--but I'll feel like a hundred bucks."

"You mean a million?"

"Yeah--I mean a million bucks, yeah. It's like, Jesus this is great, but I try not to express it. When I do start to feel that way, I try to remember who I am, where I came from, what I was before. I mean, I was like a kid who just got found, you know? And I just did a couple of movies--and movies are just that--movies. Who cares? You go out and see them and then they come out on video so fast you don't know what happened."

Pages: 1 2 3 4