Tom Sizemore

Interview by Bruce Glasgow of B&S Designs - Digial Marketing

I am good Bruce, thank you for the kind words appreciate it.

89 I made my first movie “Born on the Fourth of July”, “Blue Steel” with Kathryn Bigelow and Oliver Stone. It kept going and “Natural Born Killer” happened. I was an actor in major motion pictures, and it has been quite a ride, a lot of fun I am very grateful for the career.

I was not unlike a lot of young people when I turned 15 or 16, it finally dawned on me, I was not going to play in the NFL. I was only a good high school football player, but you know I was not fast enough or big enough. I was not going to go to Michigan or Notre Dame to play football. I would have gone to some other smaller places like Auburn College. I did not know, but what I had was really counting on the athletic thing happening for myself and so I was, I really remember it well what I am gonna do as a person, how I am I go to make money? And I could not figure it out.

My father, when I was born was only 19. He had several jobs, and he went to Law school. He was an attorney. My mother worked in city government. Nothing around me that I saw often appealed to me and I was just really kind of at a loss of what I was gonna do.

At a young age I saw a movie called, the “Wizard of OZ” and I fell in love with movies. Ever since then, I have just been into movies, television, and entertainment. I was talking to a friend of mine, Brian and about this problem he said what do you love the most? I love movies more than anything in the world. He said go into movie business.

So how do you do that? I start reading actors biographies at that point. I read James Dean’s, Marlon Brando’s, and Montgomery Cliff’s. I did not say for a while that is what I am gonna do, but it had never dawned on me that was something you could do. From that conversation, I went home that night and lying-in bed, could I be an actor? and I re-read the James Dean biography. I was not sure if you had to be from Hollywood. I read how he had started his career and he had a very auspicious beginning, but he was just a regular guy.

So, my Senior High School I was an athlete, there was this school play that we did every year “The Music Man.” I had a pretty decent singing voice; I had been in the chorus. I like singing and so I got it in my mind that I would go out for the play.

After Christmas it is in the spring, so I went out for the play and I did not get the lead part Harold Hill I got one of the dancers and the salesman and I had such a great experience wasn’t unlike sports in a way you had your big dance numbers you rehearse somebody, you practice your practice, and practice and then you had Friday Night Football game and he had opening night. So, there are a lot of parallels in sports that I enjoyed and I can’t think of any words right now to express to you how much I really loved doing this play. Doing that play, I made up my

I was fortunate I lived in a city, Detroit that had a college Wayne State that had one of the five out of ten of best undergraduate theater programs in America. There was a catch, you could not just be a theater major you had to audition to be accepted to the University. But to be a Theatre major you had to audition. You had to do one-to-two-minute contemporary monologue and one-to-two-minute Shakespeare. I had no experience with Shakespeare. I got a Shakespeare play called “Julius Caesar” and I tried to read it I couldn’t understand it really, so I didn’t have much help around me so I got to understanding Shakespeare and it was this crazy little book where it took like no matter where of comfort no man speak OK speak with their line and they would have it in today’s vernacular. It doesn’t matter where Northumberland is and let’s not talk about us being OK. Let’s talk of graves, so it went through each line and it took each line of Shakespeare and explained what it meant in present American vernacular.

I picked this monologue of Marc Anthony’s Friends Roman’s Countrymen is famous one. I was first daunted by learning it, but I learned it and I was so nervous about doing it well. Doing the contemporary thing was pretty simple then I just worked on. I finally did it for two of my friends. I was done doing it they were both speechless. Greg said brother you were born to do this time. I did it and got admitted into the program and after a year in my second year I got my first play on the main stage and really there was no looking back from there. I went to Wayne for three years.

Then, at the time there was, Robert Brustein in America who started 12 schools that were called the League of Professional Actor Training Programs (PATP), Yale, Juilliard, Brandeis, and Temple. Anyway, so I went to New York to Chicago to New Orleans and Los Angeles. They had auditions in each of those cities. I auditioned for Temple and got in. The reason I auditioned for Temple, the others seemed too pricey, you had to pay to audition. Temple was the least expensive and Philadelphia seemed like a city that I could manage better than at NYU and Yale seemed like a dream.

I got admitted to Temple. One of the things these programs offered was the graduating class each year they all come together in New York and LA and put on a presentation for the industry. The best agents, managers, producers, and casting directors would come to watch. This is where Meryl Streep started, William Hurt, Christopher Reeve made a whole host of people, including Angela Bassett. I went through the program and became the star of the program we did our presentation in New York and Los Angles. I got this significant agent Michael Bloom, at the time was the top shelf agency and I moved to New York. I did well pretty quickly and I got on “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Blue Steel.” Another agency CAA came calling and I was not with Mr. Bloom for very long. Although, it was difficult to leave him. I left him and I was a CAA client they ran the business for 27 years and they kind of still do.

It was not easy as I make it sound, I had to dig for that PTP thing to find out about those schools because my instructors at Wayne were not aware of that stuff. It was kind of a cobol, almost secret society that is how it started.

I was fortunate that I got casted by Oliver Stone in the beginning and that led to “Natural Born Killer”. That is where my real career started.

My favorite thing to do is just to watch a great movie, I watch anything, I just love movies.

Yeah, here is a funny story, “The Wizard of Oz” my mother first time ever said, Tommy I want you to watch this movie. I was six and she never done that before. I was already watching movies, but it was my mother, the family we sat down, and I was just blown away by this movie I have not seen anything... I mean the whole movie is a trip.

This kid from Houston Whittier, Detroit would one day have his name on a movie marquee. When I think about it now, it just seemed bizarre just like that I’ve done this.

The best things about the job have been the traveling, the different cultures and people that I have been exposed to. Otherwise, I would not have been all over the world. I’ve been to so many countries. This is the best part of the job.

I have been very lucky, I have had several, actually Robert Downey, Jr, Robert Dinero, Michael Mann, Tom Hanks. I did not do a movie with her... I was her friend Edie Falco, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Sasha Alexander, and Kathryn Bigelow.

know you just immerse yourself in it? There is three of them “Natural Born Killers”, “Heat”, “Saving Private Ryan”, and there is a fourth, “The Last Lullaby”.

Those four, the first three what happened in between like five years of each other when I was doing the movies, I knew I was doing something I did not know I was doing. It was he the greatest crime drama of all time, but I had a feeling that we were making something as I was doing it and I am really in the pocket right now. I am seeing the ball really well, I mean these are sports metaphor.

murderer was hiding behind the gate. I went down to the gate and there was Brad Pitt. He said that “Nicolas Cage (who was a friend of mine) had told me about your house and I would love to see it.” I couldn’t get the gate opened fast enough. I was waddling around and I was literally ready to drop the baby. Anyway, Brad came in and I took them on a tour of the house and then he came back the next day. Then a few days went by and Brad Pitt’s lawyer called us and said that he wanted to buy our house.

Something that I’d like to accomplish that I’ve been thinking about and slightly working on is doing a Broadway show of Mistress of the Dark. That was a dream of mine. I think it would be so funny, like in the vein of Legally Blonde. I think it would be a really fun show.

Those are two big questions that I’ve always tried to figure out. I think Elvira resonates with them in that, believe it or not, she’s a little bit androgynous. She’s a very sexy woman, showing a lot of cleavage and all that, but then her male side shows that she is strong, tough and determined. I think that is something peo ple align with. I think that Cher and Madonna have those same qualities. They are both super sexy and both tough. I think that appeals to gay men and women because it’s refreshing to see a woman who is not ashamed of her body, but at the same time doesn’t become a sexual object. As for the horror genre, I think it’s probably for the same reason that it resonated so well with me. I was teased and made fun of when I was a child–in my case, it was because of my scars. But I know enough gay men who were also teased and made fun of. So, I think that they grew up in general feeling a little bullied, a little bit like they didn’t fit in. Horror kind of attracts that crowd because in the movie, you always have a monster who is misunderstood, as in the Frankenstein movie. He’s really a good guy and doesn’t mean to be that way. But he has a series of things that happen that gets him to be that way. He didn’t cause it, he didn’t want it, it just is. I think that’s maybe why the gay community resonates with horror…but I’m no psychologist. But, I just feel like I’m a gay man.

I think it’s a big deal. I am really excited about coming out with this information now because for 19 years, after my divorce, I had this friend for six years with no inkling that it was going to turn into a relationship. I was more surprised than anybody else, and she was certainly surprised. It wasn’t like coming out, it just happened. I just fell in love with this particular person. But I am so happy that I am talking to people about it now and they can find out about it now because having secrets is not good. It’s like holding it in–it gives you gas. I was protecting a brand, but I held onto that secret for way too long. Now I feel like I can talk about it and if some company doesn’t want to hire me or host their television show, well then, screw them now. I feel hypocritical about being around so many gay people and having so many gay fans and not letting them know about it, but I hope they will understand it.