David Caruso: The Red Menace

"I don't look at Kiss of Death or Jade and go, 'I should have picked other movies because I'd have a big movie career right now.' I'm glad I made those movies because that's where my contribution lies. I didn't go to movies as a kid thinking, 'God, I wish I could be in the big house that's connected to making a movie.' I thought, 'I just want to be in the movie.' I want to be with guys like De Niro, in that environment, and I've gotten to do some of that. As a young actor, all I was after was to sit with these people."

"Did you ever have doubts," I ask Caruso, "about whether your unconventional looks would work as well on the big screen as they had on TV?"

"There are so many things out of your control, man," Caruso philosophizes. "Some people are an easier sell than others. There's no question that film responds to some people. I mean, George Clooney? Wow, that guy just cuts the film. He cannot look bad and that, for a viewer, is a simple, digestible leap to make from TV to movies. I'm more a guy that has to grow on you a little bit. I don't have that startling quality that some really great-looking people have."

So, what exactly happens in Hollywood when one has a very public critical and financial letdown? Do the phones quit ringing? Do agents simply not return your calls? "With the business," Caruso explains, "you're either on the 'list' or you're not considered at all. It's all extremes. I had a really rough period, when Hollywood was reverberating from this whole 'thing' about me. When people at the studios were like, 'Wow--what the fuck is this?' and 'What does it mean?'" And how do you refrain from having a meltdown at times like this? "I'll tell you a secret," he whispers. "I've learned that I can live without [success]. Because I didn't have a choice. There's a great line in a Bruce Springsteen song that says, In the end, what you don't surrender, the world just strips away. It was stripped away from me. You find out you're not going to die. You can live without it, even when you lose something that means that much to you. The roller coaster's been good for me because maybe it made me better, more available--loosened me up. I was in the spin cycle for awhile. I stepped back and that gave me a chance to focus on what's important."

"Did you go into therapy?" I ask. "A while back, yeah," Caruso nods. "Now I have a great therapist I talk to once a month just to check in. I met her through people in AA when I stopped drinking, which will be eight years in October. I had to be willing to make some extreme changes. I've been willing more recently to try and elevate the quality of my life, as opposed to playing the victim. We all get to a place where we want to be the victim. But one day, you look around and you're still the victim and nobody gives a shit."

How did Caruso manage to get back into the game? "The opportunities just started coming," he explains. "I don't think people have gotten a chance to [really] experience me yet. They kind of got a lick of the ice cream, then somebody threw the cone off the bridge."

Caruso's new TV series, Michael Hayes is, the actor hopes, a means of getting him back on the flavor list. "I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's not scary, because it is," he says of going back to the tube. "Nowadays with TV, if you're not getting numbers, you're gone. It's a single character show and if anything could be more demanding than NYPD Blue, this is. It's about issues and relationships, which is the stuff I'm attracted to. How often am I, or is anyone, gonna get the opportunity to do that in features these days? And I'm one of the producers, so we're going to be able to affect the schedule a little bit. As much of a grind as it is, it's good for me to have a structured existence."

Although Caruso has already made Gold Coast, Cold Around the Heart and Body Count, he's more interested in discussing the film he'll shoot during his series hiatus, The Insider, about a surveillance team posing as a family. Caruso's _Body Count _director, Robert Patton-Spruill, is under consideration to guide him in this one, too. "This guy Spruill is a director," crows Caruso. "We're trying to corral him for another movie, because I'm very free around him."

Caruso is eager to have ongoing professional relationships with people on his wavelength, perhaps because he has benefitted so much from the stability in his private life afforded by his marriage to Margaret Buckley, whom he met when she was his flight attendant on a N.Y./L.A. flight he took to surprise his young daughter on her birthday during the Kiss of Death shoot. At the time, this affair was a scandal and he took a lot of heat for it, but he has remained with Margaret for two and a half years now. "I'm very open to Margaret teaching me things that I'm adolescent about," says Caruso. "I need schooling. Women are a lot more grounded in a way that you and I will never be. She's a lot of fun, has a very fine-tuned sense of humor. Every day, I have to live up to Margaret, because she sets an ethical standard. She's not going to let you take the low or the easy road."

All this talk about amour reminds me of the screen chemistry between Caruso and Blue costar Amy Brenneman. Did that chemistry ever extend offscreen? "I'm not gonna answer that question, because my daughter and her friends read all this stuff," the actor declares. "I will say that I was in another relationship at the time, and she was seeing [director] Brad Silberling, whom she married. We had a number of passionate scenes together and it's hard, after they say, 'Cut,' to go your separate ways, because all of your emotions are happening. There was a weekend where I needed to call her and say, 'Can we just talk? Because I'm sitting here with another lady that I'm in love with, but I'm a little lost and I need to tell you how I'm feeling.' She wasn't necessarily feeling the same thing, but I needed to own my feelings. I tell you, a magical thing happens when you're willing to talk. [The emotional state I was in] just went like a mist, because it wasn't real. It was conjured by an illusion." Subject closed.

For a guy who's not in a place to ask for much, I wonder what Caruso is asking from Hollywood now. "If there was just a little shelf I could occupy and people could come to that shelf for a hit or fix when they're looking for that kind of resonance. Movies are about desire, because they're impossible things to make. If you have people who have the desire, something can happen. I still have the desire."

Since Caruso has probably gotten the most attention in his entire career from the time his butt was seen in all its glory in a love scene on NYPD Blue, I have to end by asking, "Now that Smits is doing the same, who would you say has won the battle of the bums?" Caruso laughs. "I would have to say probably Jimmy. There were some pretty great butts on that show. Mine wasn't one of the great ones. My butt's a little pale, if you know what I mean."

"One last question," I say. "What strength sunblock do you use?" Caruso laughs again. "Forty-five, man," he shoots back. "Or Rust-Oleum."

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Sigourney Weaver for the September '97 issue of Movieline.

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