It wasn’t long after “Forrest Gump” hit theaters in 1994 that Gary Sinise knew it wasn’t going to be just another movie.
A few weeks after its June release, the actor walked out of his Pasadena home to retrieve the newspaper. There on the speed bump in front of his house that once read “bump,” someone had painted a “g” over the “b” so that it now read “gump.”
Around the same time, Sinise was at a California water park with his family. He was splashing around in a pool when some kids nearby started yelling, “Hey! Lieutenant Dan!”
The youngsters swarmed Sinise — hardly a household name at the time — asking questions about the film and begging for autographs.
“They’d all seen the movie two or three times, and I thought, what’s going on here?” Sinise, now 63, tells The Post.
“These 12-year-old kids are going to see the movie multiple times? I thought we’d be in good shape.”
The movie, of course, did become a massive hit, as well as a cultural phenomenon. And playing Lt. Dan Taylor, a wounded Vietnam veteran, changed everything for Sinise. It turned him into a boldface-name actor and earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Oscars. Maybe most improbable of all, it gave his life a new purpose: honoring veterans.
Sinise writes about his awakening in a new memoir, “Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service” (Thomas Nelson, out now).
The book chronicles his life from high-school burnout to someone who now spends much of his free time working for veterans groups, including at his own foundation.
Sinise, who was raised in Illinois, grew up in a military family but says he rarely considered his relatives’ service as a child. His father served in the Navy during the Korean War, developing top-secret film sent back from battle zones. (He later worked in Hollywood as an editor.)
“Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service”
His uncle was stationed in Japan and once gave 5-year-old Gary a uniform to wear.
“I wore that uniform as much as Mom allowed,” Sinise writes. “To the store. To kindergarten. On Halloween. I even slept in it.”
As a teenager, Sinise had little of that military discipline. He barely passed his courses and could be found smoking pot or huffing oven cleaner at parties.
Midway through high school, however, Sinise was hanging with a rough-looking friend in the hallway when a teacher approached and suggested that they should play gang members in an upcoming production of “West Side Story.”
Sinise signed up (mostly to meet girls) and immediately became hooked on drama. His life now had a purpose.
“We can all search our memory banks for those singular moments, where if you had turned left, life would be different,” he says. “That was such an important moment in my life.”
He graduated in 1974 and formed Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company with some friends. Early on, the outfit staged shows in a modest church basement, but through the years, it would become among the most influential drama companies in the country, counting John Malkovich, John Mahoney, Laurie Metcalf, Gary Cole and many other stars among its alumni.
Sinise’s break came in 1982, when he directed and starred in a New York production of “True West.” On opening night, the cast and crew headed to Chumley’s in the West Village and hung out awaiting a copy of the next day’s New York Times to be delivered with the review. It was a rave.
The success opened doors for Sinise in Hollywood. He landed a production deal with Columbia. His agent asked him how much he wanted per year. Unsure, Sinise quoted $60,000. The studio laughed and told him to accept $75,000.
Sinise’s big swing was a 1992 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” which he directed and starred in, along with Malkovich. The film was well-received and earned a 10-minute standing ovation after its Cannes premiere.
Gary Sinise as Lt. Dan in 1994’s “Forrest Gump”©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
But, as Sinise writes, it had the misfortune to be released close to another well-reviewed film with a heartland theme: Brad Pitt’s “A River Runs Through It.”
“Of Mice and Men” got little marketing push and quickly faded at the 1992 box office.
Soon, however, Sinise was summoned to a Paramount conference room to audition for “Forrest Gump,”
He was to play Lt. Dan Taylor, a gruff commander whom Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) meets while serving in Vietnam. During a jungle firefight, Lt. Dan is wounded and Gump comes to his rescue.
Lt. Dan loses his legs and is confined to a wheelchair, making him bitter. But later, he works with Gump in a shrimping business and gets rich by buying early on Apple stock.
Sinise trained with real Marines on Parris Island for the role, and the battle scenes were filmed on a South Carolina golf course.
Gary at age 5, wearing a gift from his uncle, who served in the militaryGary Sinise's personal collection
“The greensmen brought in all kinds of jungle foliage to make it look more like Vietnam,” Sinise writes. “It was almost comical. On one side of a tree line, golfers were teeing off, and on the other side, we were staging a battle and blowing things up.”
The filmmakers digitally erased Sinise’s legs in some scenes. (Sinise wore green stockings). In other scenes, Sinise sat in a prop wheelchair that allowed his legs to be folded underneath him. The contortion required Sinise to go to physical therapy every day for three weeks.
But it was worth it. The movie ended up the top domestic earner of 1994 and won the Oscar for Best Picture.
“I couldn’t tell you exactly why the film worked to the degree it did,” Sinise writes. “But it played to a lot of different emotions, covered a lot of territory, and had lovable characters at the center of it.”
Lt. Dan definitely struck a chord. A few months after the release of “Forrest Gump,” Sinise was invited to a Disabled American Veterans convention in Chicago. It was there that he realized what the character meant to wounded warriors.
“The wounded folks would relate to that character so much,” Sinise says. “Most Vietnam veterans were portrayed as someone who wouldn’t be OK, but Lt. Dan is OK.
“He’s rich and married and has prosthetic legs [at the end of the film]. We hadn’t seen that kind of story about a Vietnam veteran before.”
Sinise writes in his memoir that he worried veterans were not being sufficiently honored and wondered what he could do to help. He reached out to the USO and began meeting and greeting troops overseas. He visited Iraq in 2003. “The very first soldier I met said, ‘Hey, Lieutenant Dan, you got legs!’” Sinise writes. “And then each one down the line just kept calling me Lieutenant Dan over and over. I realized they didn’t know my real name, so I went with it.”
Gary Sinise playing guitar for the Navy during a concert at Walter Reed National Military Hospital in 2017.Timothy Lundin Photography 2018
Sinise soon longed to do more than just shake hands. So in 2003, he gathered some musician friends and formed the Lt. Dan Band, which has since played covers of Journey, Bruce Springsteen, Bruno Mars and others during more than 400 shows for troops and military groups.
“This band isn’t about gaining recognition or becoming an international rock show or making any money,” Sinise writes. “The mission has always been about encouraging our defenders.”
He also has a foundation that builds accessible houses for injured veterans.
“We’re the beneficiaries of the people who provide our freedom,” Sinise says. “We need to support them. That’s what I’m doing. I’m just trying to pitch in.”
