Eric Roberts on problem actor label, drug addiction, sister Julia

The leisure business is going through an existential disaster, with much less content material being produced and much fewer jobs for the taking. Thankfully, Eric Roberts obtained sensible to this state of affairs effectively earlier than anybody else did, even earlier than we binged TV reveals as a supply of pleasure. “They now offer you no time to rehearse they usually pay you much less,” says Roberts, who’s greatest identified for his live-wire movies. “You may’t sit round and anticipate the large paycheck anymore.”

As Roberts writes in his new memoir, ”Runaway Practice: Or, the Story of My Life So Far” — out now — he leaned arduous into this new regular years earlier than everybody else was scrambling for scarce jobs. Roberts too feels that pinch, which is why he “says sure to all the things.” “We are sometimes overdrawn, broke and scared. I do know individuals who have been within the forged of ‘Titanic’ [who] can’t pay their lease,” Roberts writes in his memoir.

However Roberts has no use for fame anymore; he simply needs to work. Within the e book, which Roberts wrote with journalist and novelist Sam Kashner, he boasts of getting 750 credit on his IMDb web page. By the point he sat down for this interview in August, that credit score checklist had ticked as much as practically 850. “I’m an actor, at the start,” he says. “Every thing else is secondary.”

A standout amongst a technology of New York theater actors who transitioned into movie within the Seventies, Roberts burst into public consciousness in Bob Fosse’s 1983 biopic “Star 80” as Paul Snider, the homicidal husband of Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten (portrayed by Mariel Hemingway). Roberts dissolved into his character, a manipulative small-time hustler whose self-hatred metastasizes into murderous rage.

Different high-profile roles adopted, equivalent to fugitive Buck McGeehy in Andrei Konchalovsky’s 1985 motion thriller “Runaway Practice.” The actor acquired an Oscar nomination for that position, and it transported him onto talk-show couches and tabloid covers. Flush and feeling himself, Roberts purchased a penthouse residence on Manhattan’s Higher East Facet and a home in Greenwich, Conn. He additionally started to abuse cocaine. In time, he would lose the residence and the home; the medication remained.

However “Runaway Practice” the e book will not be some weepy expiation for previous sins, a Hollywood reclamation job designed to kick-start a once-buzzy profession. Roberts is aware of all too effectively that he has made horrible selections, that his erratic habits broken his relationships with family and friends, together with his sister Julia Roberts (their relationship stays contact and go; Roberts avers that “we’ve got agreed to not speak about one another’s careers.”) Nonetheless, Hollywood lore is awful with addicts who have thrived regardless of their unhealthy habits, and for some time, Roberts walked the tightrope.

As Roberts describes in cringey element within the e book, his fall from grace got here just a little bit at a time, then all of sudden. He persistently wrested defeat from the jaws of victory, arguing himself out of appearing roles with Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone, amongst others. “I used to be excessive once I confirmed up for my audition with Ron Howard,” says Roberts.

Roberts was an erratic maniac, little doubt, however a lot of what he discovered concerning the darkish arts of self-immolation got here from his father, Walter, a screenwriter through the glory days of radio drama who then began his personal theater in Atlanta, the place Roberts was raised. A bitter, boastful striver, Walter inspired his son to behave, solely to savagely criticize him when he did so, which confused and angered his son.

Roberts’ father was a small-time grifter and as soon as tried to enlist him to rob a pharmacy for much-needed money. At evening, Roberts’ mom often beat him with a dowel. Blessed aid from the lash of the dowel got here when Roberts’ dad and mom cut up. Walter was awarded custody of Roberts; sisters Julia and Lisa went to dwell with their mom. Walter continued to whittle his son right down to dimension. “My father taught me lots concerning the strategy of being knowledgeable actor, however he would denigrate me at each flip,” says Roberts. “As a child it was very tough. How do you cope with a father like that? It was arduous to course of.”

Even when Roberts in some way scraped up the cash to maneuver to New York, his father continued to hound him with an countless stream of letters by which he would alternately browbeat him as an underachieving mediocrity, reward his expertise, ask for cash and accuse him of abandonment. “I used to be nonetheless getting 1000’s of letters,” says Roberts. “I nonetheless have them. It was insane, dude! Finally, I noticed it’s a must to love folks for who they’re, however you possibly can’t allow them to stroll throughout you. Even when it was honest and loving, it felt misplaced and imply.”

Regardless of this epistolary “thoughts management,” Roberts soldiered on, touchdown his first TV gig in 1977 on the cleaning soap opera “One other World.” Roberts’ smoldering, high-beam depth caught the eye of Joe Papp, a panjandrum of New York theater who forged Roberts in a Public Theater manufacturing of the Civil Warfare drama “Insurgent Ladies.” Roberts earned his Actors’ Fairness card, then scored his first movie position as Dave Stepanowicz, the scion of a New York crime household, in 1978’s “King of the Gypsies.”

But at the same time as Roberts was endearing himself to a wider viewers, he was enraging administrators along with his insistence on staying in character 24/7. “I’d yell at folks for no cause, lock myself within the trailer and violently kick the door from the within,” Roberts writes about “Star 80.” “I started manifesting [Snider] to the purpose that it was imperiling the whole manufacturing and infuriating Fosse.”

After that, it was arduous to shake the “downside actor” label, particularly given the hair-trigger eccentrics he was manifesting so convincingly on movie. Roberts’ drug dependancy did little to assist his trigger. “Blow was in all places,” he says. “I imply, you go to the prop truck on a set and they might have a giant bowl of cocaine for everybody. How might I get any work executed?”

“I’m unsure how all this labored out for me, actually,” Eric Roberts says. “If it weren’t for my spouse, I might need been lifeless by now. I do know that sounds dramatic, but it surely’s a reality.”

(Deborah Feingold Pictures)

Roberts’ non-public and public lives converged, as if he have been utilizing Stanislavski’s sense reminiscence in reverse, conjuring up bizarre scenes from his movies as materials for his private use. His stepson Keaton, whom Eric helped elevate, moved out as a youngster, unnerved by Roberts’ erratic and sometimes violent habits. In 1995, Roberts was arrested for shoving his spouse Eliza in opposition to a wall.

Suffice to say, he didn’t stroll into rehab; a courtroom order obtained him there, for 18 months.

When he emerged, considerably purged of his personal self-hate, Eliza was ready for him. She pulled him up, brushed him off and transitioned him right into a life the place he would sublimate his addictive impulses into regular work. She is Roberts’ supervisor and consigliere, and the pairing has paid off properly. This yr alone, Roberts has acted in 73 productions — a western miniseries, a couple of low-budget sci-fi movies and one thing known as “My Redneck Neighbor: Chapter 1 — The Rednecks Are Coming.” He’s additionally a contestant on the brand new season of “Dancing With the Stars,” premiering Tuesday.

And Keaton got here again. A singer-songwriter and TV and movie composer, he has subsequently labored with Roberts. As for Emma, Roberts’ daughter with former associate Kelly Cunningham, Roberts says, contemplating that they haven’t been concerned in one another’s lives and don’t talk with one another that a lot, their relationship is “cordial and supportive, however not shut.”

Given what number of occasions Roberts has tried to sabotage his life and his profession, he’s effectively conscious that it might have gone the opposite method. “I’m unsure how all this labored out for me, actually,” he says. “If it weren’t for my spouse, I might need been lifeless by now. I do know that sounds dramatic, but it surely’s a reality.”

Eric Roberts might be signing copies of his memoir, “Runaway Practice,” at 7 p.m. Sept. 25 at Barnes & Noble on the Grove in L.A.