by Terry Crews
“Hey, Terry, you’re off for the next three weeks,” one of the producers said. “We’re going to send you back to LA.”
“No, no, I’m just going to stay here,” I said.
I was afraid if I left for even one day, they’d realize I was no good and fire me. Looking back, of course, that seems crazy to me. But I can understand now that this was my mind-set in the aftermath of the shakeup I’d experienced in the NFL. Because I was always getting cut, I was really insecure. I hadn’t had a stable job since I’d left college, and so I assumed things weren’t going to be any different now. I figured if I didn’t leave, then they couldn’t get rid of me, and they’d have to keep me around.
The problem was that I was far from home, all alone, and under tremendous pressure. I had no idea what I was doing as an actor, but I couldn’t afford to lose the job, not only because we needed the money, but also because this was my Hollywood dream, finally coming true, and I was determined that I wasn’t going to do anything to mess it up. And so I acted out, as I’d been doing when I was under stress since I was ten years old. But because this was the worst anxiety I’d ever experienced, I acted out in the most extreme way I ever had. I didn’t sleep with another woman, but what happened was just as bad, perhaps even sleazier. It was like my porn addiction had stepped out of a magazine and come to life.
As soon as it was over, I regretted it immediately, just like I had with losing my virginity in college. I couldn’t believe I’d actually let it go that far. How did this happen? How did this happen? How did this happen?
As I paced my hotel room all the rest of that day, I made a decision: There was no way I could ever tell Rebecca what had happened because she would definitely leave me. And so I would have to take my secret to my grave.
That was a dark time, and it got darker. Although acting out had alleviated my stress in the moment, it did nothing to help me in the long term, and my guilt and shame only made me feel more terrible. I was still lonely, and homesick, and worried I’d get fired at any moment. Only now it was worse because a part of me was also afraid to go home and face Rebecca with my secret inside of me.
Luckily I had one means of actually feeling better, even when I was at my lowest and loneliest. I started working out with a new trainer named Mike Talic, who ended up completely revolutionizing my approach to fitness. I never would have guessed the important role he was going to play when I met him. He was this rotund Slavic man, a former Olympic coach, and a sweetheart. He was not a pusher at all. On our first day at the gym, he stopped me before I could lift a single weight.
“Terry, Terry, let me show you what to do,” he said in his thick accent. “Let me show you how to do it. You have to start with the basics.”
I looked at him doubtfully.
“I’ve been working out all my life,” I said.
“No, no, no, no, you do this move,” he said, showing me. “Then you do that move. You keep doing it, it make you stronger.”
I still wasn’t convinced because I’d never seen anyone train like this. Normally, trainers were all about pushing and pain. I know what I’m doing, I thought. But he was so sweet that I wanted to go along with what he said just to make him happy. I started listening. I was about to do another rep with the weights when he stopped me. “That’s enough, Terry,” he said.
“What do we do now?” I asked, looking around the gym.
“That’s enough,” he said. “Go home. Relax. Let yourself grow.”
Of course, relaxing was harder for me than doing almost anything else, especially when I was so anxious about everything in my life. Some nights, Mike invited me over to his house for a simple dinner. It felt good to be out of the hotel, and the conversations we had, along with those workouts, totally changed my mentality. He taught me a new approach that was more about being patient and being kind. And I found that his gentle example inspired me to work harder, so the next day I wanted to lift a little more than I had the day before. He took me to another level, where I was inspired instead of being kicked.
Mike was very cool, peaceful even, but he made me stronger than I’d ever been before. Most of what I learned through him were actually very basic moves—power cleans, dead lifts—but they made me strong. I realized that so much of the other stuff I’d been taught was just fluff, basically people trying to pose and look good for one another. Whereas Mike gave me a basic, positive approach that made me better in everything, and it’s been the basis of what I do in the gym ever since.
Finally, I made it to the end of the shoot, and I returned to LA. I was so nervous about seeing Rebecca. I knew I could never tell her my secret. At first, it ate away at my conscience. But then time went by, and I tried to put it out of my mind, until I didn’t think about it anymore.
I hadn’t gotten fired from my first movie role, and now I was an actor. I actually started getting fairly regular work in movies, and commercials for big brands like Nike and Jack in the Box. But I never gained confidence. And so I used to just kill myself on every role. Even when I had the chance to work with Reginald Hudlin, who’d become like a mentor to me after seeing my film, Young Boys, Inc., I couldn’t relax. He put me in a movie called Serving Sara, starring Matthew Perry. Because this was my first job acting for Reginald, and he was my friend and my mentor, I pulled him aside, literally, after every scene.
“How was that?”
“How was that?”
“How was that?”
Finally, he wasn’t playing anymore.
“Terry, if I said ‘cut,’ it was good,” he said, sounding irritated.
I suddenly got how much I’d been bugging him. I hadn’t meant to, but I didn’t believe he was telling me the truth when he said I was good. Part of being such an extreme perfectionist was that I never trusted any compliment I was given, and I was always fishing for more. If two people said I did a good job, then I needed five people to say I was good. It could go on to infinity. And, ultimately, it was a losing game. I doubted everything I did. I wanted to be good so badly that I went over my lines until I was delirious. On top of that, I was such a pleaser that I would never make any suggestions to a director or question anything I was told. Even if I wasn’t qualified to do a stunt, I did it. I felt like my job was to do whatever I was told, no matter how crazy. “Whatever you tell me, I’ll do,” I said.
I had spent two years on the TV show Battle Dome, and I’d gotten a few movies and commercials in its aftermath. We’d just had our third child. Things were looking really good for us as a family. After having put up with so much over the past ten years, Rebecca was ready to make her first big demand: She wanted a house of our own, which we owned. I did not like this idea from the beginning. I was still bad with money, and I felt like it was enough that we were finally in a rental house we could afford. And I loved that little barn house. It just felt so good to me. But it was clear that, with three kids, we had outgrown our current living space.
“I don’t know, Becky,” I said. “I just want to sit tight.”
“No, Terry, we can buy,” she said. “Everybody’s buying. We’ve got to just do it. You’re scared.”
No man likes to be told he’s scared. So that got my attention and dinged my pride. But, even more than that, because of all of the bad decisions I’d made during our marriage, and how much I had put Rebecca through, and my dark secret, I felt like she deserved to finally get something she wanted. I couldn’t refuse her.
“You know what?” I said. “Fine.”
I still thought it was a bad decision, but I kept my mouth shut. Rebecca found a pretty house in Pasadena, and our offer was accepted. It was ours. After moving dozens of times in the past twelve years, we had our own home. And then, on the second day after we moved in, all the plumbing went. So I was in this new house, and I couldn’t even flush the toilet. The plumber said it was going to cost three thousand dollars for the repair, and I’d spent every penny we had just to buy the house. I had to borrow the money. It was around the holidays, and I
couldn’t afford anything. We didn’t furnish the house. We had nothing.
At least I knew that after the holidays, I’d get back to work on Battle Dome, and I’d be able to climb back on top financially. Well, then the show didn’t get picked up for another season, and we lost our regular income stream. I wasn’t that worried, though. I was getting enough small movie roles and commercials that I knew something would work out. And then there was a commercial strike, and no commercials were being filmed in the city. I didn’t have another movie. I didn’t have a TV show. I didn’t have a commercial, or any hope of landing a commercial anytime soon. And now, for the first time, I had a mortgage. That’s when I started to worry.
Our mortgage was only $1,200 a month, but with no income and three kids to support, I couldn’t afford even that. All of our creditors started calling the house, and calling the house, and calling the house, and it reminded me of college all over again. I thought I’d seen the end of those dark days, but here I was again. I kept telling myself: Just concentrate, Terry. Stay focused. Keep doing what you’re doing—going to auditions, and writing your own screenplays—and something will come.
In the middle of all this financial stress, Rebecca got pregnant again, and now we had a new baby on the way. We began to prepare, and I tried to stay positive. And then, in 2002, a few months into Rebecca’s pregnancy, she had a miscarriage. It was horrible. We had already been through a miscarriage in college, so I knew how sad it was to lose a baby, but this time it was so much worse. I’m not sure if it was hormones, or stress, or probably a combination of everything, but Rebecca was gone. There were days where she wasn’t the same person. She lay in bed, and she couldn’t eat. She wouldn’t talk to anybody.
When I went into our bedroom and tried to get her to eat a little something, or just make sure she was okay, she talked about strange things that didn’t have anything to do with reality, and I worried about her more than ever.
At first, I didn’t want to tell anyone what had happened. The miscarriage felt personal, private. I was ashamed of our financial problems, and I didn’t want to admit to anyone how bad it had gotten. I felt like all of this was my doing, because of my poor decisions and my dark secret. This was our punishment, and we needed to take it. So I didn’t talk to anyone. I just kept my head down and did what needed to be done, which was everything in our house. I made the kids’ lunches, took them to school, did the grocery shopping, took care of the house, picked up the kids at the end of the day, got them fed and bathed and into bed.
All the while, I knew we were losing the house. The letters from the bank kept coming and coming. I had no income, and what little money we’d had was gone. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to pay the money we owed on our mortgage. I finally admitted to myself that I had to find us a new place to live.
In ninety days, our house would be gone. My wife was not all there. And I didn’t know what to do, so I just prayed: What should I do?
And, miraculously, as I prayed, I felt strong. I remembered how, when I was weak and collapsed in on myself, when I thought I hadn’t been drafted, when I thought my NFL career was over after the Packers, Rebecca was the one who was strong, and who picked me up and convinced me I had to keep going, no matter what. And now, when she couldn’t help herself, I knew I had to be strong for both of us, and I was. Instead of spiraling down into a depression myself, I was able to do what needed to be done at home, and for the kids, and even get myself to auditions. No matter what, I knew I couldn’t leave her. And I knew, all over again, that I could never tell her what had happened in Vancouver. I had to keep everything afloat, and I would. But even with all of that, nothing was going to save our house.
I WASN’T ABOUT TO ADMIT TO ANYONE, NOT EVEN MY closest friends, how bad things were, and so I hadn’t talked to anyone in several months. And then, one day, my phone rang. It was my friend Mark Allenbach. “Hey, Terry, how’re you doing?”
“We’re doing okay,” I said, too proud to admit otherwise.
“Are you up on the house?” he asked.
The question came out of nowhere. I had no idea why he was asking, or how honest I should be. And then, I realized, there was no denying the truth anymore.
“I’ve got to be out of the house in thirty days,” I said. “I’m going to let them take it, man, because right now I can’t handle it. I’m looking for a new place to live.”
“Look, I’m going to pay what you owe,” he said. “We’ll put the house up for sale, correctly, and we’ll go from there, so you guys can get out in the right way.”
“Oh, man,” I said.
I didn’t know what more to say. I hadn’t volunteered any of this information to him. I hadn’t asked for help. And yet here he was, offering to save the day.
“I had a feeling that you needed me,” he said.
“Thank you.”
That was all I could say: Thank you. I was so humbled by his generosity. And I was so grateful that we were going to get a chance to make things right.
Slowly, but noticeably, our circumstances began to turn around. Mark took care of the payments we owed. We put the house up for sale in 2003, and we sold it. We even made a small profit. Mark and I made an agreement that I would pay him $1,000 a month until we were even. This was yet another example of his amazing generosity, because it gave me the chance I needed to get us back on our feet.
At the same time, I knew I had to do something to help Rebecca. I was really worried about her. So I finally called our old pastor Joel Brooks, who had married us back in Kalamazoo. I told him about the miscarriage and the state she’d been in since then.
“I don’t know what to do, man,” I said. “I mean, what’s going on?”
“First of all, take her to a doctor and make sure she’s in good health. You’ve got to get her checked out.”
I took Rebecca to be examined, and they realized she had a hormone imbalance following the miscarriage, which had just taken her out. They gave her medicine to regulate her hormones. It also helped that we no longer had the stress of losing the house to worry about. Rebecca started to recover. She got her bearings back, her mood improved, and she came alive. It was such a relief.
I started getting a few small jobs. Rebecca got pregnant again. Now we really needed a new place to live, but we couldn’t afford anything. And then we went to look at a place in Altadena that was so beautiful and well done. After everything we’d been through, I wanted to rent that house for my family, but I knew I didn’t have enough money. The owner, Samuel, was from Ghana, and he walked behind Rebecca and me as we looked everything over and then looked at each other.
“So do you want it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I like you. It’s yours.”
“Well, sir, we’ve had some issues. I’ve got some credit stuff.”
“I don’t need to see credit. I don’t need to see anything. I like your spirit. I see you with your wife. I like who you are. You just give me what you can.”
It seemed unbelievable, but it was really happening. Rebecca had kept telling me to go for the best place we could. But I’d been feeling bad about myself and all of the mistakes I’d made, so I didn’t feel I deserved a nice place. Then I realized this is how faith works: You take action based on where you want to be, not based on where you are. And I began to see that we all get some things in life we don’t deserve, and we can all point to times in our lives when things went our way.
Everything was finally good again. But we were still just getting by, and I was hungry to do something to take us to the next level. I had finally landed a part in a movie called Friday After Next. I was acting with Katt Williams in most of my scenes, and we became really good friends. He was homeless at the time, and so at the end of the day’s shooting, he only pretended to go home. Then he waited until everyone had left and snuck back into his trailer, so no one would know he was living there, and stayed overnight. A few people found out, of course, but they let him do it.
At the same time, I’d been going through everything at home, selling the house, trying to look for a place to live, and not knowing what we were going to do. So Katt and I really bonded, and we made a vow: This could be the last project for both of us, and so we’ve got to make it memorable. We’ve got to go all out.
What we did on that movie became the catalyst for so many things that happened for me later in my career. My character was a really despicable guy, and I had nothing to lose, so I threw all of my stress at home into my performance. When we were filming, I was able to completely enter this other character and forget all of my own problems, and that felt so amazing that I just went for it.
The film was a comedy, but I played this big guy who’d just come out of jail and taken a liking to this pimp, played by Katt. We had a scene in a bathroom, where I was pretty much trying to take advantage of him. Well, even though it was a comedy, we played this scene as if it was The Deer Hunter. Seriously, if you turned the sound off, so there were no cues to tell you to laugh, it would be horrifying. We were sweating and crying, and he was slapping me, and I think it really added a layer to that film that made it deeper than just a straightforward comedy.
When I took Rebecca to the premiere, she couldn’t handle that movie at all, especially when it came time for the bathroom scene.
“Oh, this movie is crazy,” she said. “This is not my thing.”
“I know, honey,” I said. “I know.”
But then, there were so many moments when I was onscreen and the theater just erupted. So maybe comedy was for me. When I’d filmed the movie, I’d been in a place where I was so desperate, and as actors, we often find comedy in sadness. So much comedy happens in this strange dark place. It’s where Richard Pryor and so many of the comedy greats came from, and I felt all of that when I watched the movie. During one of the worst times in my life, I was able to laugh, and I was able to make other people laugh. And that was a really powerful moment for me.
