Eric Roberts IX: The Eyes Have It

You may not remember Eric Robert's promising body of work in the early 80's but you do know his sister, Julia, who has proved to have a much more durable career. She was still in school when Miss Lonelyhearts was in production but her breakout film, Mystic Pizza, was only a couple of years away, along with her rise to stardom and the eclipsing of her older brother's fragile hold on fame.

As the older sibling, Eric was the first to reach movie star status and based on the extraordinary films he made over a few short years in the 80's he had more talent and potential, but the same genes that made Julia a quirky comedienne (Rupert Everett recently referred to her in his new book as 'beautiful but slightly mad') had a much darker manifestation in her older brother. As serene and innocent as Julia appears, Eric is the dark spirit, the sinner, the shadow. Combined with his sweet, vulnerable side this unpredictability gave him the complexity for more interesting roles. His films, including Star 80, The Pope of Grenwich Village, The Coca-Cola Kid, and Runaway Train, were all critically acclaimed, the last one garnered him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. But by 1985, only two years after we filmed Miss Lonelyhearts, his rise was over.

In the beginning there was no mistaking the siblings' raw material in Hollywood terms: between them Eric and Julia had the requisite movie-star looks with mirrored male/female features. Although he had a strong profile, Eric was as strikingly beautiful as his sister, with the same luxurious wavy hair, expressive blue eyes, full, sensual mouth and dazzling smile. He was a also a complicated, angry, enfant terrible who forged relationships that were as murky as the roles he played. He was, in short, fascinating to be around.

He was perfect for the role of Miss Lonelyhearts and the strong, experienced support cast created a powerful atmosphere to work in. It is a dismal tale about the underbelly of ordinary lives and culminates with the young advice columnist being murdered by the jealous husband of one of the women he'd sympathetically befriended after she had sent him a desperate letter. We all felt the pull of the story as it wound its inexorable way to the climatic ending. But as the producer and director of our ambitious student movie soon found out, the brooding, character and very heart of the film was gradually taking over the fractured ego of our young star.

So when Eric failed to show up on the last, but critical week of shooting, there was both a sense of disbelief, but also a vague undercurrent of inevitability. We'd lived in dark, stained rooms for too long, watching silently from the shadows as the cast steeped themselves in a morass of despairing emotions and the particular exhaustion of people who are stuck in hopeless situations. The sets may have been false fronts, but we were working 18 hours a day, stumbling home in the dark to sleep and then rising again pre-dawn for another round so it had in many ways become our reality too. Blinking, we were forced into the sunlight for the first time in weeks and for a while got on with our lives, the mystery of what had happened to Eric open to maddening speculation.

When Lydia called me several weeks later to ask if I would be interested in particpating in the reshoots, they had a plan to work around the missing footage and get their deal with PBS. It was then I heard what had happened the day Eric disappeared.

Apparently he got on a plane and flew back to Long Island, to Sandy Dennis' house. Didn't tell anyone, just walked out of his hotel room and took a cab to the airport. Whatever strain there was between this odd couple certainly hadn't been helped by Eric's erratic behavior in L.A. and if they argued when he returned home we don't know the details. The only thing we do know is what was reported in the press: Eric was out of control on a highway near their home, speeding along in his open Jeep when it flipped over and crashed. He had extensive injuries, and his face was badly torn up requiring reconstructive plastic surgery. There was something eerily familiar about this story: thirty years earlier another promising and brilliant young actor, Montgomery Clift, had suffered the same fate and his career never recovered.

It seemed only fitting when I saw photos of Eric's lumpy face months later that he now resembled a prize fighter. His delicate, almost feminine features were gone, and with them the gentleness and whisper of naivete that I'd found so compelling. Now he looked mean, battered and defensive, the scars barely visible except for a crooked nose and the thickness that comes from damaged skin and muscle.

The man who emerged to star as the abusive, controlling husband in Star 80 and the misfit in Runaway Train was transparent to me now - and although he retained some of his handsomeness, more rugged in a powerful frame, the allure was gone. And his career lost momentum, with only the financial, man-cult success of his martial-arts character in the Best of the Best series to follow over the next decade.

His decline to B-movie status may seem puzzling to those who could not understand why such a promising actor failed to capitalize an amazing string of successes, but it's not a surprise to me. This past year Eric appeared in The L-Word, a popular series about a group of gay women friends in L.A. His character was the father of one of the main players, a soft-spoken, intelligent man who seemed determined to mend his estranged relationship with his daughter. But in the end he turns out to be a slick, deceitful manipulator. True to form.

The last time I saw Eric was outside a grocery store on Olympic Boulevard, a couple of years after Miss Lonelyhearts wrapped and sucessfully aired on American Playhouse. I was engaged to Michael, we were preparing to work on Pee-wee's Big Adventure and my student film days seemed very far away. Eric was lurching a bit, he seemed high on something and had his arms draped around two skimpily-clad young girls, one on either side. He was boozily regaling them with some story and to my astonishment, his stutter was completely gone.

"Eric!" I exclaimed. I couldn't help myself. He glanced over at me, gave me a look of utter distain and kept on going.

But for that familiar look I wouldn't have known if he'd remembered who I was.


Photo: Eric Roberts and Arthur Hill. Author's collection.