“My wife turned to me in our kitchen one day and said, ‘We’re moving to Birmingham,” he recalls. “My career was at a pretty decent place, and my family was at a pretty decent place. We had chosen to homeschool our girls, and she said our girls were curious and wanted to go to school and there was nothing in California to suit them. Los Angeles is an image-driven city, and adolescent girls don’t need image-driven issues. We had dear friends in Birmingham that we visited a lot, so my girls knew it more than other cities.” So eight years ago, the O’Neills packed up and moved to Mountain Brook. O’Neill, a Montgomery native who had grown up during the civil rights movement and didn’t have fond memories of his home state’s racial history, didn’t know what to expect, but he has been pleasantly surprised. “It’s friendly and smart and I think progressive in some ways,” he says of Birmingham. “You have a lot of people in Birmingham who have repatriated there for the hospital industry, the banking industry, the restaurant industry. It’s a wonderful city.” And their daughters have thrived. Their oldest, Ella, graduated summa cum laude from Auburn in December, and her father gave the commencement address. His younger twin daughters, Annie and Molly, are in school at Rhodes College and California Polytechnic State University. Moving to Alabama didn’t mean O’Neill put his career on hold. “Sometimes I need to be in Los Angeles or New York,” he says. “I go for extended periods of time.” The past year has been particularly busy, with O’Neill appearing in three feature films – “Clemency,” “The Stand at Paxton County” and “Indivisible” – and, among other series, the second season of “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” on Amazon. Most recently, he has been in Savannah, Georgia, filming the first episodes of his new NBC series “Council of Dads,” which will
premiere in March. Based on the book by Bruce Feiler, it’s about a young father, diagnosed with cancer, who puts together a group of six friends to help raise his daughters. “I feel like I’ve been waiting on this one for 25 years,” O’Neill says. “It’s really, really powerful. I’ve done a lot of characters that have driven people apart, and this one may bring people together.” O’Neill has appeared in more than 100 TV series and movies, playing senators, FBI agents, fathers, chaplains, disturbed killers – a wide array of roles. “There are certain things I won’t play,” he says. “I won’t play a racist, and I won’t play a guy who hurts a child.” “Council of Dads” has already joined a list of O’Neill’s favorite projects. “Clearly Butterfield in ‘The West Wing’ is a favorite of mine, and ‘Seabiscuit’ was really important to me because I had three small children at the time,” he says. “I loved ‘Transformers’ for a different reason – I had never done one of those big, big films, and it was just a lot of fun. ‘The Unit’ meant a lot to me, because of the proud tradition in the South of serving in the military.” That array of roles means that O’Neill gets recognized often. “There are a lot of ‘West Wing’ or ‘Seabiscuit’ or ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ fans,” he says. “My wife sees it more than I do. What happens a lot is that people confuse me for someone they know because I’ve been in their living rooms. There’s a lot of that.” And that’s just fine with O’Neill, who might never have gone into acting at all save for that kind word from Will Geer. “I never thought this would happen, and the only part that I envisioned was that it would be better for me late than early,” says O’Neill, who turned 68 last May. “That seems to be what’s happening now. It was a busy year, a really busy year, and I’m thankful. I’m grateful they’re letting the old guy run.”
From left, the cast of “Council of Dads”: August Richards as Dr. Oliver Post, Clive Standen as Anthony Lavelle, Michael O’Neill as Larry Mills. The NBC drama premieres in March. PHOTO BY QUANTRELL COLBERT/NBC
14 JANUARY 2020
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