by Tom Sizemore
Anyway, I agreed to go away. Maeve and I ordered Chinese food, and the stage was set for us to actually be together. Maeve worked with this guy named Glenn, who was my assistant at the time, on making sure I’d actually check into Sierra Tucson. To prove that I was serious I had to send Sierra Tucson a deposit, but I kept making excuses for why I wasn’t doing it. So my mom and Aaron flew out once the movie wrapped to make sure I went; the doors were closing in on me. Because I felt trapped, I stopped heroin cold turkey, which of course made me completely dope-sick. I still hadn’t sent Sierra Tucson the deposit. That’s when Glenn came up with the idea of doing an actual intervention and involving De Niro in it. They knew that if Bob was involved, I wouldn’t be able to say no.
So, on June 1, 1995, Maeve dropped me, my mom, and Aaron off at my therapist’s office and then called her friend who got me into Sierra Tucson and promised I’d check in there that night. At the same time, Glenn arranged for De Niro to show up at my therapist’s. All I knew was that I was sitting in therapy with my mom and brother talking about my drug problem, and suddenly Bob knocked on the door. He came in and said, “Tom, I’m not going to watch you die; I’ve had friends die.” I guess that he was with Robin Williams and John Belushi the night Belushi died, but I have no idea if that’s what he was talking about. All I know is that I started weeping. Bob was so empathetic—he really extended himself and projected himself into my drama, which he didn’t need to do and which most people wouldn’t do. I was just another troubled actor he happened to work with, but he didn’t give up on trying to convince me to go to rehab until I said yes.
He said to me that the gig was up and that I was a wonderful actor and he wasn’t going to let me die. He asked me, “Don’t you want to wake up and know what the hell you’re doing? Don’t you want to remember what you did last night?” He kept going on and on. Finally he told me, “I love you like you’re my son.” I didn’t want to go to rehab but how could I say no to that?
I went to Sierra Tucson on his private plane and stayed for thirty days. My mom, dad, and brothers Aaron and Paul came to visit, as did Maeve, and I wrote Maeve love letters every single day. I really thought I could stay off drugs and just live a pure, healthy life. When I came back to L.A. clean and sober, Maeve and I really, truly fell in love. It was one of the most romantic summers of my life, and we spent every second together. In many ways, we were the quintessential case of opposites attracting: she was this pristine blonde who’d played at Wimbledon and the French Open. I think I was the third guy she’d ever slept with. Because I was so consumed with her—because we were so consumed with each other—at first it didn’t seem all that hard to stay sober. In retrospect, I think I had transferred my drug addiction to a Maeve addiction.
When you’re in love, you don’t have to do a lot to be perfectly content, and we were no exception. I’d moved from Harratt Street in West Hollywood to Flores Street, just a few blocks away, and she moved in with me the day I got back from rehab. We didn’t really leave. I remember she always made fun of me because I was, on the one hand, completely organized, almost to an obsessive-compulsive degree—I liked people to take their shoes off when they came in, and I’d have my freshly pressed shirts in the closet and my glasses lined up just so—but then I’d throw my underwear everywhere. She also used to tell me that I had more beauty products and vitamins than any chick she’d ever known. She was probably right about that.
We spent a lot of time just watching movies, reading books, and listening to music. We also had a trainer whom we shared, and we would exercise together. We actually did everything together; we even shared a cell phone. We got a golden retriever, Seamus, and our whole life was centered on each other and this dog. We’d go on hikes with the dog, walks with the dog, we’d cuddle and play with the dog. And the two of us had a lot of sex—the most romantic, intense sex of my life. We’d essentially be bawling and telling each other how much we loved each other.
Maeve was like a Rottweiler when it came to making sure I stayed away from drugs. She had my phone number changed. She kept me distracted. And since we were together all the time, there was no way I could have done drugs even if I’d wanted to. We were so attached to each other that we actually preferred a queen-sized bed to a king because that meant there was less room and we’d have to sleep even closer together—there was literally just enough room for us and Seamus. We’d tell each other that when we died, we’d need to be buried together in the same casket. We picked out the names of our future kids and essentially just had the best summer of our lives.
We also developed some rituals back then that we kept for our entire relationship. Our morning routine was to make Irish oatmeal and coffee and then eat it with me sitting on the couch and Maeve in a nearby chair. I’d say, “What’s the plan, Stan?” And she’d respond, “I don’t know—you tell me, Stanley.” And then I’d say, “It’s up to the boss; I’m nothing without my Stanley.” Usually, after that, we’d go on a hike or to the gym.
Neither of us was much of a cook, but Maeve wanted to learn so one night she made steak. And honestly, it tasted like a doorstop. But it was really sweet how hard she tried and how much she cared about making me a dinner that would make me happy. After that, I asked if she’d cook for us again, and she said, “What are you talking about? The steak I made tasted like a doorstop.” And I told her—and I meant it—“Come on, that was the best worst steak I’ve ever had in my life.” Eventually she got better at it and also learned to make some other things, like pasta and this sea bass like the one that they served at Nobu—where we used to go with De Niro a lot back then. She essentially had three dishes, but I learned to love them. I actually came to like them better than anything I could get if we went out to dinner or ordered in, and I was sort of obsessive about her being the one who cooked for me. If my assistant offered to make me a sandwich, I’d say no and ask Maeve to do it.
They say that when you get sober, you have to make that your number-one priority in life, and I wasn’t doing that. Maeve was my number-one priority and after that came my career. I’d go to the AA meetings in Hollywood, but I only liked to go if she came with me, even though she wasn’t an addict and had actually never done drugs in her life. She’d encourage me to go on my own but I felt like I didn’t want to be away from her.
Fairly early on in the relationship, I knew I wanted to propose, and, in the fall of 1995, my business manager and I went to a diamond dealer, where I bought a ring. But I decided I would wait to ask her to marry me until sometime during the week between Christmas and New Year’s.
She went back to see her family in Chicago for the holidays and was scheduled to come spend New Year’s with me in Detroit. But by the time I got to Detroit, the ring was just burning a serious hole in my pocket, and I felt like I couldn’t wait a minute longer to ask her.
There was a horrific storm the night she was driving from Chicago to Detroit, and I started to panic that something was going to happen and she wasn’t going to make it. So I just sat by the window, waiting and waiting for her to show up. Finally she did. She burst in the door with our dog, saying that she desperately had to pee. I said, “Hold your pee—I have something to ask you!” She went, “No, Tom, I really have to go,” and rushed to the bathroom, but I still felt like I couldn’t wait to ask her. So while she was in the bathroom peeing, I burst through the door and got down on one knee. I pulled out the ring box and as I was about to ask her, she started saying, “No, no, no.” I said, “No? I haven’t even finished asking you yet and you’re saying no?” And she laughed and said, “No, I meant not when I’m on the toilet! I don’t want this to be the story we tell our children!” We both started laughing, then she flushed the goddamn toilet, said yes, and we both began crying.
I wanted to get married literally the day after I proposed or at least by May, but Maeve talked me into waiting until the following September. She wanted a long engagement because she wanted to make sure I could stay sober, and she told me that she w
ouldn’t agree to try to have a baby until I’d been sober for at least five years. So we planned this big Irish Catholic wedding in Winnetka, Illinois—where she was from—and I focused on staying clean.
Maeve had started to work a lot more as an actress—she became a regular on the CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful—and that meant I had more and more time on my own. And I wasn’t great with time on my own. I had a bunch of movie offers being thrown at me at that point, but my agents and managers really wanted me to wait for the right thing. And when I was offered the lead in a horror movie called The Relic, we all agreed it was right. I had been offered leads in other movies that I didn’t think were any good, and after Natural Born Killers, Devil in a Blue Dress, Strange Days, and Heat, I decided I wanted to be in something where my character would actually be alive at the end. And I wanted to star in a big Hollywood picture—to prove to people, and to myself, that I could carry one. I was ready to go from being what I called an hour actor to being a two-hour actor.
The Relic was sort of Alien meets Die Hard. It was about a Chicago police lieutenant who teams up with an evolutionary biologist to track a trail of gruesome murders to the basement of Chicago’s Field Museum of natural history, and they realize the killer isn’t actually human. I was in New York when I got the offer, and I discussed it with De Niro over lunch. I told him I was worried, and when he asked me why, I said, “Well, I’ve never had to carry a film.” He gave me great advice. He said, “Just take it one scene at a time. Stay healthy, get your rest—and it will happen.” So I signed up to do it and got ready by meeting with curators and scientists to learn more about the research that goes on behind public museum exhibits.
I had prepared for Natural Born Killers by riding around with the Chicago police. I’d literally put on a bulletproof vest and said, “Take me to the most dangerous places.” We went to murder scenes, but I never got shot at; I was actually almost hoping I would, just to see what it felt like. Anyway, because my character in The Relic is a Chicago policeman, I used some of what I’d learned back then to inform this role.
The Relic started shooting in Chicago but then continued in L.A., and by the time we got back home, Maeve was on set at The Bold and the Beautiful all day. That’s when I found myself thinking about heroin again—and not just thinking about it but actually obsessing over it. By then, I’d hired one of Maeve’s friends, Carol, to be my assistant. CAA had sent down every hot little twenty-three-year-old they could find when I’d originally decided to hire someone new, but Maeve knew me well. She took one look at what was going on and said, “Oh, no—I’ve got someone who will work out far better.” She introduced me to her friend Carol, whom she’d worked with at a clothing store and who was, most relevantly, a lesbian.
The rule Maeve and I had established was that I wouldn’t leave the set of The Relic unless Carol was with me. So one day I got smart. I asked one of the extras if I could borrow his car, and then I took it downtown at lunchtime to score heroin. When Maeve came home that night my eyes were pinned, and I had the AC on full blast and was itching everywhere and trying, with every bit of acting skill I could muster, to convince her that I wasn’t high.
Of course, it didn’t work. She could always tell when I was high; she could literally tell if I’d used by the way I walked up the stairs. So she called Peter Hyams, the director of The Relic, and told him that she thought they should do another intervention. She really believed in me and was doing everything in her power to save me. And if anyone could have, it was she; that woman is a force of nature.
So Maeve, Carol, Peter Hyams, and this guy Dallas Taylor—who had once been in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young but had become an interventionist—did another intervention on me, and I agreed to check into Exodus, a rehab in Marina del Rey, as soon as the shoot wrapped.
I did, as promised, check into Exodus when I was supposed to but I was so defiant that I just picked up and took off after a week—not to go out and use drugs, if you can believe it, but so that I could be home in the bed I shared with Maeve and eat pizza. I’m not kidding. Maeve came home to find me in bed with a Domino’s pizza. She drove me straight back to Exodus, and even though I tested clean, they made me start their program over again.
Once I was there, Maeve had all my agents and managers come to visit me and tell me that they couldn’t handle my addiction any longer and that if I couldn’t stay sober, they were all going to leave my life. I know now that these were all people who loved and cared about me and were terrified by what I was doing to myself—and, by extension, to them. But I was so deluded that I just got angry.
When I finished the program after a month, I relapsed almost immediately. I essentially spent the entire next year at Exodus. I went three times over a period of twelve months. I could stay clean when I was there but as soon as I’d get out, I’d use again. I liked being there, actually, especially because a lot of guys I knew were in there with me—guys like Scott Weiland and Mike Starr. The crazy thing about being in rehab with Mike Starr, God rest his soul, is that he was so high for so long that when we were on Celebrity Rehab together fifteen years later, he had forgotten we already knew each other and were friends. If you watch the part of the show where we’re introduced and Mike clearly doesn’t realize he already knows me, I have the funniest look on my face.
I don’t know if it was because Exodus was so hard-core or if everything I’d heard in rehab finally just gelled together in my brain—or if I was just sick of the cycle of cleaning up, only to relapse—but I was eventually able to get sober and then stay clean for the nine months leading up to our wedding. Originally, De Niro was supposed to be my best man but a month before the wedding, he found out that his film was going to open the Venice Film Festival, and he couldn’t make it. We actually thought about moving the wedding because of that, but Bob wouldn’t hear of it so we just went forward.
Even though I had very solid sobriety at that point, I started to panic about everything going on in my life, and I actually planned to relapse once I got to Chicago—which was where I was flying into for the wedding. So before I went to the airport to go to Illinois, I got up really early in the morning and bought a bunch of heroin. I hadn’t done any heroin in a long time, and I bought about two hundred dollars’ worth and then threw out about two-thirds of it. I had ten balloons and ended up taking only three or four. I flew to Chicago with my friend Scott, and I was just a bundle of nerves—partially because I was flying with heroin, partially because I knew I was about to do heroin for the first time in a long time, partially because I hate flying, and partially because I was getting married. I was just a mess and ordered a drink the minute I stepped on the plane; I think I’d downed it by the time I sat down.
When we got to Chicago, I made up this bizarre excuse for Scott about having to go to McDonald’s and have a burger or something; in reality I needed to get tinfoil to do the heroin. So we went to the closest McDonald’s to the airport, and as I ordered a burger, I said in a whisper to the counter person, “By the way, do you have any tinfoil?” Scott heard me. He knew me really well and understood that my asking about tinfoil meant I was trying to get it to get high. He just said, “Tinfoil? That’s it, mister,” and led me out of there. I played innocent and tried to convince him that he’d heard wrong or misunderstood what was happening, but he wasn’t having it. He just said, “That’s it—let’s go.” He asked me to hand over the dope, and I didn’t deny having any, but I didn’t hand anything over, either.
The next night, there was a barbecue at Maeve’s house, where her family was going to meet mine for the first time. I was, honestly, terrified. Her family is so lovely and respectable and I didn’t know how they were going to react to mine. And Maeve knew that the best way to handle the situation would be to tell the bartenders not to serve me any alcohol. But what she didn’t count on was that my high school friends from Detroit would all be there, slipping me drinks. Everything went okay between our two families, but I got pretty drunk, which mean
s that I didn’t feel like ending the night after the party. So a group of us went out to clubs in Chicago afterward. And I know this sounds bad, but my Detroit friends and I always called each other “nigga”—it was just something we did. So we walked into this nightclub and, completely drunk, I basically screamed, “Where the fuck are all these niggas coming from?” It was one of those movie-like moments where there was complete silence in the place. And then I heard a deep voice from behind me ask, “Now what did you say?” and I saw a big black hand in front of my face. It turned out that, completely randomly, Laurence Fishburne happened to be in town and he was at that club. As he stared down at me, he suddenly realized he knew me. He got this weird look on his face and just went, “Tom? Is that you?” I was, of course, horrified and did my best to try to explain myself, but I was so embarrassed that I ended up getting even more obliterated. By the time I got back to my hotel room that night, I was a complete wreck.
The next morning, Maeve and my mom came to my room and basically said I had to stop drinking or the wedding was off. I promised them that I would stop, and I was determined to keep my word.
That night was the rehearsal dinner, and I had to give this big speech about how Maeve and I met. I was incredibly nervous and think it might actually have gone better if I’d had a drink. But I was stone-cold sober and just sweating up a storm—which is what I do when I’m anxious—and the speech was a disaster. I tried to just talk about how Maeve and I met, but then I delved into this whole thing about how we were dating other people but really had the hots for each other. I was just sweating and sweating, and it was getting worse and worse. Finally, Scott put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I think that’s enough.”
