Posted by When Steve Guttenberg’s father, Stan, was diagnosed with kidney failure requiring dialysis, the actor would drive 400 miles from Los Angeles to Phoenix every week to be with him during his treatments. Eventually, Steve and his sister, Susan, even learned how to administer dialysis themselves so Stan could have it done at home.
Steve’s devotion to his father stems from a lifetime of love and wisdom, which he shared in his memoir “Time to Thank: Caregiving for My Hero.” The book recently won a Christopher Award, so Steve joined me on “Christopher Closeup” (podcast below) to talk about it.
“My dad was a hands-on dad,” Steve recalled. “He loved to be with his family. At the end of the day, he left the office and came home, never went out with the boys. A guy who was always there for me who was very gentle in his discipline, but firm. I was in love with my dad. He was my best friend.”
That relationship never faltered, even as Steve moved from Long Island, New York, to Hollywood, to pursue an acting career. He shares a story in “Time to Thank” about meeting the photographer who would take his first head shots. This man told Steve that the town would age him and eat him alive. But Steve credited both his parents with giving him the foundation to make it in Hollywood without losing his soul.
He said, “I think that I was able to – and am still able to – navigate my business with a great deal of values. And that’s what it’s all about. Your values create your behavior. Then your behavior creates your habits, your habits become your destiny. So I was very lucky to have a great mom and dad who taught me at my kitchen table, our kitchen table, how to swim the river of life. And we lived in a working-class neighborhood…When I say working class, I mean grade A class. All our neighbors and our friends were people of high values. You don’t need money to have high values. You don’t need money to be a person of class, of nobility, of integrity, of character. That’s who I grew up with.”
Steve also grew up in a family that accepted God and the importance of faith. “My dad grew up in a kosher household, in a religious household. My mom, not so much, but they’re both Jewish, and they both taught me the meaning of faith, of belief, that we are not alone here, that there’s another force in control…which is God. Whatever you believe, there is something else going on. You may not believe in gravity because you don’t see it, but it’s going on. Same thing with faith and whoever, whomever you call God. It’s going on, even though you don’t see it…I’m Jewish, and I’m quite religious. I think about God all the time…and I believe that God has a lot to do with my success.”
Steve achieved a great deal of success beginning in the 1980s in hit movies such as “Diner,” “Three Men and a Baby,” “Cocoon,” “Police Academy,” and more. He continued to work in TV and film in the following decades, often in roles that reflected his real-life friendly, affable nature. But Steve recently took on a character that deviates from that norm: a serial killer.
In “Kidnapped by a Killer: The Heather Robinson Story” (which reairs on Lifetime June 21st at 6:00 p.m.), Steve is not immediately recognizable due to his makeup and the way he carries himself. He explained, “It’s a true story about a young lady who, about the age 15, realizes that…her uncle is not her uncle, but a serial killer who murdered her mother and gave her as an infant to his brother and sister-in-law who weren’t able to have children. It’s a horrific story and compelling as all heck about this man who was so heinous but fooled everybody in his life. I was so proud of my work on the movie, even though I’m portraying someone who is beyond horrible, but it was a chance for me to work my craft.”
Though Steve treasures his acting career, it will always come in second when the needs of family arise. That’s why he did not hesitate to make the long weekly trip to his father’s side when he fell ill. “What I [and my family] went through with my dad,” Steve reflected, “I think taught us about love…Love is the most powerful form of integrity in the universe that will ever be. There’s nothing more powerful. So, when you love somebody or somebody loves you, you can climb Mount Kilimanjaro…you can lift a car off the ground…and you can take care of somebody you love so much because of that love. You can stay up and show up more than you ever thought you could because of love…When someone you love calls out, how can you not run down the hall to them? My running down the hall was 400 miles, but it was an easy trip. My dad also had a great line that he learned from Joel Osteen. He said, ‘Don’t walk a mile for someone who won’t cross the street for you, but walk 10,000 miles through a hurricane for one minute with someone you love.'”
As heartbreaking as it was for Steve to relive the events around his father’s illness and passing in writing “Time to Thank,” it was also energizing and joyful to think back on all the wonderful moments they shared over the years. He hopes that readers take an important message from this Christopher Award-winning memoir.
Steve concluded, “I’m so honored because the Christopher Awards are really about books, art that expands the consciousness and creates a place where you can learn about people and incidents that you never knew existed. What I would love people to take away from my book…is that if you are called and you’re able to, don’t run from the situation. Run toward the situation and see what you can do and what you can contribute. There are two types of people in this world: the givers and the takers. And believe me, the givers are the winners.”
(To listen to my full interview with Steve Guttenberg, click on the podcast link):
Light One Candle - the blog of The Christophers 