Standing at a towering 6'2", Bruce Boxleitner is a handsome leading man for all to watch. He first came to national attention in the ABC mini-series, How The West Was Won, portraying JAMES ARNESS' nephew. That was followed by a role in the NBC mini-series, The Last Convertible, and more recently the TV movie, The Gambler, starring KENNY ROGERS, and his current feature film, The Baltimore Bullet. Next season, he will back on television with a major role in the new mini-series adaptation of East Of Eden.

The brown-eyed, 30-year-old farm boy from Elgin, Illinois is married to actress Kathryn Holcomb who was cast as his sister in How The West Was Won before they had ever met! The couple just welcomed their first child. The ever-busy Bruce took time from shooting to have lunch with RBH's Arthur Stern at a Sunset Strip restaurant where he talked of his career, his TV epic, East Of Eden, and his life at home with his beautiful wife "Kitty."

RBH: How is this new version of East Of Eden different from the James Dean film of 1955?

BRUCE: This is the original, the whole novel. The James Dean movie was only the last third of the novel and a couple of very important characters were left out of it. The characters we did see were beefed up. The whole thing was changed from the John Steinbeck novel. Sam Bottoms, in our version, is playing the James Dean role. It's an epic scope that scans two generations in seven hours.

It's been a chaotic shoot. The material deals with the love and hate of brothers and, for actors, that's juicy stuff to get into because it ends up being played off the screen. You get a bunch of thoroughbred racehorses and lock them in a room together, and . . . (Laughs.)

RBH: Did you all get along with each other?

BRUCE: Oh, yeah, but there were a lot of fireworks. I couldn't tell you what specifically, but they cast very well. They must have known that the personalities would bicker. Sometimes there were some disagreements, like "I wanna kill you!" (laughs), which makes for good movie-making. Those are the type of things that went on in the original East Of Eden.

RBH: I want to hear your big love story that blossomed into marriage with Kitty.

BRUCE: We met in '75 and the biggest break I had was getting this part opposite James Arness in How The West Was Won. It was the most thrilling thing in the world to me. We all went on location and had met briefly, and I saw Kitty, but I was too caught up in the excitement of it all to take another look.

When we banded together in Utah (the young stars in comparison to the seasoned veterans), it brought us all together and I really got to like Kitty a lot. One thing led to another and we were dating just as the show was ending. I got real sick during the end of the show and she took care of me—boy! did she take care of me!

With most movie studios, you either have to be dead or die on the set for anyone to take notice and say, "Oh, are you feeling bad?" I pretty much had walking pneumonia by the end of the show, so I was trying to get someone to pay attention to me. We started dating after that, eventually lived together, and then we got married (May '77). Now it's love and marriage and the baby carriage.

RBH: Does she want to return to showbusiness in the near future?

BRUCE: I would think later on she will. She wants to take the time off now at least for a couple of years and let our child get on its way. I wouldn't stand in her way, only if. . . . You see, I'm really old-fashioned, and I truly believe that there is no room for a career when a woman is having a baby. I believe the mother should be there.

People are very screwed up later on their lives, because one of their parents (was not there). Daycare centers are fine, but not for my kid. If I have to be one who's going to be making the living, someone is going to be there for that kid to come home to. My mother was there. If you're going to have a baby then you have to sacrifice that much time until the child is on its way.

You can't have mother running off in another part of the world. There're a lot of ladies who can disagree with me, but then don't have a baby if you want a career. I'm very chauvinistic, but the family is being ripped apart as it is. Wherever we go, Kitty and I are going to take the child along. I don't want to be separated anymore.

RBH: Is it true that as an actress your wife wasn't as aggressive as you?

BRUCE: I started out in stage and really had some goals in mind. She did commercial work, and walked into the last day of auditions for How The West Was Won, and they really didn't care for this other girl they decided on at the last moment.

At that time, Kitty looked like a young Eva Marie Saint. She has the skill, but it was sheer luck.

RBH: Was James Arness your idol when you were growing up?

BRUCE: Oh, yes. I've always been a real Western buff. My life at home is very Western-oriented and to work with him was quite a thrill. When I first came out to Hollywood, I thought Western movies weren't being done anymore and I always wanted to do one. James Arness was very helpful to me in learning the television medium.

RBH: You once said that you were glad to have this type of role in hopes that people would look up to the American hero-figure of long ago.

BRUCE: I really think so, and it's sad. The West is our myth. California wouldn't be here if it wasn't for this. We'd still have Spanish ranches. I think that ethic is still very much with us—the bad parts and the good. The Western movies were really a part of our growing up and I think it's a healthy thing.

RBH: Do you feel there's too much of that missing now?

BRUCE: I think every generation brings its own heroes and anti-heroes. I just wish there were more things for young people, but you can't have that classic good guy type of thing anymore.

RBH: What kind of parts would you like to do most?

BRUCE: The parts I like to do are things that will appeal not necessarily to the intelligentsia. I like things that go to everybody. You'll last longer with those people.

RBH: Would that make you against playing any more heavies?

BRUCE: Right now I guess people are having a hard time seeing me as a villain. I have played a number of them. In television episodes the first guest-starring parts I got were killers, rapists, baby-faced murderers.

RBH: Do you and your wife like to go to parties in town?

BRUCE: Hollywood parties with all these punk-rockers are fascinating to watch but I can't say that I go to them.

RBH: Then you would consider yourself a homebody?

BRUCE: Yes. I like to read a lot, and the horse that I am training constantly takes a lot of maintenance and care. I do riding and roping. You do have to have some other kind of life than sitting around being an actor. James Coburn once told me—and I believe this—that you are not an actor unless you are working. A musician is a musician, a painter is a painter—they can sit alone and play music or draw, but what does an actor do? Sit around and say "To be or not to be" to the wall?

RBH: Do you enjoy living in South California?

BRUCE: I love it! All my life I wanted to live in California and I believe it was my destiny to be here and to do what I'm doing. I knew it when I was swinging from haybale to haybale in Illinois playing Errol Flynn. I like all the Western states. I think Robert Redford has the ideal situation. There's a guy who's dealt with this town on his own terms, and thet's very admirable—to be your own boss, and to call the shots.

I think actors are gypsies in search of a home.

I couldn't be happier right now. Sometimes Kitty and I sit and look out our front window, and it's a beautiful golden sun, and we pinch each other and say, "My God, what have we done? Something is really going our way." Success to me is being a working actor, and having respect from other actors. Right now, I couldn't be any more successful. I don't know what else there is.
 

Thanks, Claudia!