Tommy Boy - interview with actor Tom Sizemore - Interview

In this month's The Relic, actor Tom Sizemore battles inside a Chicago museum with a man who has turned into a primordial monster. It's not such a stretch for Sizemore - he recently fought a fight with a monster of his own making. Here Michael Mann, who directed Sizemore in Heat, talks to the burly actor about his turbulent journey

MICHAEL MANN: Why are you the way you are?

TOM SIZEMORE: why am I the way I am? well, I used to be different. [both laugh]

MM: I'm kidding you. What impels you to act?

TS: I was a wayward kid, a rambunctious and angry teenager, but I found acting as a fifteen-year-old. I saw some movies with Montgomery Clift and James Dean, and I read biographies about them - then Marlon Brando - and I got it in my head that I wanted to be an actor. The first scene I did in an acting class was from In the Boom Boom Room, by David Rabe. I played Big Al. It was a very violent and emotional scene, and I liked that - I realized I had it in me.

MM: Is there a way to describe the heightened experience of performance, the groove you drop into?

TS: You go up there and you take that whatever it is, and you express yourself. And when it happens, things are more colorful, more intense. You're naked, you're just you - and you make the character come to life and make people really believe that it's real. It's an addictive feeling.

MM: What's the feeling?

TS: There's a certain euphoria to it - abandonment - and a vindication that you really are an artist. I remember there was one very important quiet scene I had in Heat [1995], where my character, Michael Cerrito, decides to go on the bank heist. A couple of takes were really good, I thought, and I could tell you liked them. You were smiling, and Bob [De Niro] said some nice things, and [cinematographer] Dante Spinotti said, "Hey, that was wonderful." I was already elated, because of your reaction and what I felt myself. That was the best feeling, and I was high for a few days.

MM: That was an interesting scene, because here's this reformed action Junkie - almost like a herein addict in N.A. - who's got his life back together with his wife and kids. And in one scene he has to decide whether or not to Jeopardize all he's built. Ultimately, he says, "For me, the action is the juice - so I'm in." What were you telling yourself In that pivotal moment with Bob?

TS: I did a substituting thing. I have some demons in my own life. I shouldn't have done certain things, but I did them anyway, knowing that I shouldn't do them, for the heightened experience I got from them. So I used the thought of doing drugs again and what all that encompasses - bad women, late nights, being wired. I would play that scene even better now, because, being married myself and having straightened out my life, I have a better understanding of what the stakes were for Cerrito.

MM: You're a manic, driven guy with a dynamic range of enthusiasm. What were you like at age five, six?

TS: I was a very enthusiastic five- and six-year-old. I had young parents and I was in love with them. My early childhood was wonderfully creative and fun. I know my old man doesn't like me talking about the family too much, but they had a bitter divorce when I was a teenager, which was when my life changed.

MM: In The Relic, the qualities you bring to that character are energy and intelligence. The guy's on all the time. He's wry, he's sarcastic, with a very accurate kind of cynical Chicago street wit. Having worked with you, I know it's a certain kind of energy that you have, not just as an actor, but as a man. Again, in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers [1994], you gave a bravura performance. Your character, [detective] Jack Scagnetti, is completely cranked up. Did you search for a model for him?

TS: No, because at the time I made that movie - it was the summer of '93 - I was very cranked up. First, I steeped myself in serial killerdom; I read all these Ted Bundy books. And then Oliver himself has this way of amping things up. He's a provocateur, and there was a kind of madness that went on during the making of that movie - a kind of hell-bent, fuck-it, blow-it-up, you-can't-be-obscene-enough, there's-nothing-you-can-do-that's-too-big-or-too-disgusting kind of attitude. I took on that energy.

MM: In your mind, was there one thing that Scagnetti was doing? Was he looking for a date?

TS: Yeah, in all the wrong places, with murderous enthusiasm. I don't have the bearing of a police officer, so I played him like a stone-cold fucking sociopath or psychopath - both. He's a bottomless pit of ugliness. The murder of his mother mined his life, so he became a serial-killer expert, and then crossed over and became a killer himself.

MM: So he's like you - he picked an arena in which he could act out. [both laugh]

TS: I wouldn't say I'm quite Jack Scagnetti.

MM: For me, one of the ironies of being a director is that you have no clue how any other director works. Talk some more about Oliver Stone.

TS: When he hired me, Oliver said, "I'm making a table. I have four legs already - Robert Downey, Jr., Juliette Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, and Woody Harrelson. And I'm going to have a fifth leg on my table. And if that leg is wobbly, my table is a very fucked-up table, and things fall off of it. You're not going to be a wobbly leg, are ya?" And I said, "No. I won't, I won't, I won't fuck up your table."

When you've got a good director, like you or Oliver, you want to please them. Like, when I had to choke the prostitute in Natural Born Killers, we did it a few times and it was fine. But Oliver came over, and I could tell he was displeased. He said, "I just don't feel like you're killing her. You want to kill her - so kill the fuckin' bitch!" And the way he said it, I really wanted to get there for him.

MM: So how does a guy like you rate -

TS: Such a nice wife [actress Maeve Quinlan]?

MM: Yeah.

TS: For all the witches and all the previous -

MM: Bad women you were alluding to.

TS: Man, the collection of bad people of the female persuasion that I used to let into my house. . . . [laughs] But I got lucky. I met a nice woman and I've turned my life around. It wasn't a plan, like, "Oh, I've got to meet a nice girl and settle down and get in great shape and become an acting machine," or anything like that. I had two years that were a real difficult time emotionally, during which I had three relationships. I was living fast and keeping late hours, which is a euphemism for . . . well, you know what I mean. And I had been advised by some people I respected to. slow down and get my shit together - I remember you pulled me aside yourself once. So I decided to make changes in my life and, in the middle of that, Maeve was there - we were friends from before - and I confided in her and we fell in love. She's an incredibly smart, compassionate person and she accepts me. I have a hard time relaxing as it is, but this is the first time I've been able to be quiet. I hazard to say it, but I have a kind of domestic bliss right now. My wife and I are a team, and it's good for my work because I'm interested in working from a stable base. Making movies is very important to me, and I worked really hard to get here. I didn't come to Hollywood to drink or get high, and I don't want to be considered a cool actor - I want to be a great actor.

MM: What actor was the biggest influence on you growing up?

TS: Nicholson, Hoffman, Pacino, and De Niro were the big four, but De Niro, by far, was the biggest influence. I idolized him. I saw Taxi Driver [1976] as a thirteen-year-old. My dad took me to see it, and about halfway through it he turned to my uncle, who was with us, and said, "We shouldn't have brought Thomas to this movie." But it blew me away. Then, when I was sixteen, I saw The Deer Hunter [1978] on opening night in Detroit - a night I'll never forget because of the way it left people in the audience devastated. De Niro's performance in that movie solidified my desire to have that kind of power. I knew enough about acting to know he couldn't be a character like the one he played if he didn't have some of that in him. He was the kind of guy you'd want to have as your best friend. You see that in that scene where he takes the John Savage character out of the vets' hospital - dealing with life with grace and courage in the most dire kind of circumstances. Now, having got to know Bob as a man, I know he does possess a lot of those qualities. He's been an incredibly good friend to me.

MM: How?

TS: He took an interest in me. I bumped into him, and he said he had really enjoyed me in True Romance [1993] and Natural Born Killers. Subsequent to that, I met with you, and you had me in to read with him for Heat and you gave me the part. Then, doing the movie, Bob and I became close. But I had a lot of problems. I was engaged at the time - to another woman, not Maeve - and it was an unhappy engagement. I came to work one day to train and I broke down, started crying, and Bob consoled me and counseled me.

At the end of Heat, I was in big, big trouble. I was miserable, and I was into that roller-coastering kind of substance abuse. I could have badly hurt myself or somebody else, and I didn't realize it at the time because I was in the throes of it. Looking back at it now, I realize it was totally insane. But Bob was there for me. I get a little emotional just thinking about it, because it really was the beginning of this turnaround I've had - emotionally and spiritually.

MM: What did he do?

TS: He took me to a rehabilitation center.

MM: So he intervened actively?

TS: Yeah, at the end of our movie, he said, "You're in trouble with substance abuse and I'm going to take you to this place. I've got a plane, and we're going to go right now. You're not going home. You're not going to pack. I'm going to drive you to the airport. You're going to get on the plane. You're going to go right there." It was the beginning of my ability to get clean. After I got out of that place, I had some, you know, slips, but now I'm completely healthy and it's behind me.

Bob showing that concern had a huge impact on me. When I first got out, he would call me up and say, "You've got to stay strong, you've got to stay strong." I don't know if he's going to like me saying all this stuff because he's very private, but he's an even better person than he is an actor - and he's a great actor. He's one of the most decent men I've ever met. It's kind of a great irony. When I was going to rehab, I thought, Here's this guy who had inspired me to become an actor and now, not only is he a friend, but here he is saving my life.

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