John Spencer article

[FilmChick7]

He's such a nice guy. If anyone cares to see the picture of him with me, email
me.

katie

NY POST/By CLAIRE SIEGEL
-----------------------------
John Spencer can remember his last drink down to the smallest detail. It was 11
a.m. on a May morning in 1989 and he had already downed half a bottle of vodka.

"I was feeling really awful and sick on the floor," he says. "I knew I had to
stop. But I didn't know what stopping meant. Did it mean run away? Go out of
town? Did it mean kill yourself?"

He called a cousin who'd gone through the same thing herself. "I told her: 'Get
me somewhere before I change my mind,'" Spencer says. "Twenty minutes later,
she was there with me, and another 20 minutes later I was in the hospital."

Spencer is an alcoholic with a family history of the disease. As painful as
these memories might be, they've serve him well as an actor.

He's currently playing musician Martin Glimmer, a pot-smoking boozer on his
last legs, in the Manhattan Theater Club's production of "Glimmer, Glimmer &
Shine."

And he's getting ready to head back to L.A. for his role as Leo McGarry, the
recovering alcoholic chief of the White House staff on TV's hit drama "The West
Wing."

The two characters he plays are quite different from one another, but Spencer
has, in a way, lived both their lives.

Born John Speshock, the only child of a truck driver father and waitress
mother, the actor grew up in Totowa, N.J. He took the stage name Spencer when
he was 16 and attending the Professional Children's School in Manhattan. But he
moved to L.A. for a recurring role on "The Patty Duke Show" - his first job.
That's when he started drinking.

"I had a phony ID and there were certain bars that would serve me," he says.
"During my teenage years, I was mixing growing up and being considered an adult
in the workplace at the same time. My drinking went from occasional to every
day to intensely every day."

He kept working, drinking and along the way got married. The 1968 marriage, to
an actress he declines to name, ended in divorce in 1975.

"It was an unhappy marriage," says Spencer, 54. "Not to begin with, but it
ended on a very unhappy note. We were both alcoholics. We didn't know it. We
just thought we were big drinkers. The best news is that 10 years after the
divorce, we became good friends."

By 1989, the drinking had started to affect his health.

"It didn't stop me from working," says Spencer, who after "Patty Duke" came
back to New York and enrolled as a student at NYU, only to drop out and return
to acting.

"My alcoholism was hurting me more than it was hurting my career. The only way
I could change things was to stop."

He learned what "stop" meant when he went into the hospital. "I detoxed for a
week and then went to a rehabilitation center for four weeks. So, during that
period of time, the rest of my world stopped."

One thought tormented him. "I'll be sober, but I'll never be able to act
again," he remembers thinking. "I told people I'd start drinking again if I
couldn't act. Then I got out of rehab and went right into 'Presumed Innocent.'
That was the first thing I did in sobriety and some of the best work I ever
did."

After that, Spencer's career took off in earnest. He starred in "L.A. Law," did
movies and performed both on and off Broadway. He's got an Obie award, a Drama
Desk nomination, a SAG award and an Emmy nomination. Still, he says, "That's
all nice, but the real prize was always just getting to do the work."

Now there's "Glimmer, Glimmer & Shine." He's been doing it for the past two
years - including a 12-week period when he worked on "The West Wing" by day and
the play at night.

Now, he's scheduled to end his run July 8, but that might change. "I'd like to
extend it," Spencer says. "It all depends on when I have to be back in Los
Angeles for 'West Wing.'"

And then there's the business of making it without the booze. He says, "Acting
is easier than life. I'm often more comfortable inside the skin of a character
than just pure John. But I'm 54 now, and I'm getting to be more of the man I
want to be.

"There are still a lot of things I have to work through - fears, anxieties,
disappointments, overachievements and then failure. But I'm trying to
choreograph some life into my life."

Though Spencer says he'll never marry again, he shares a Midtown apartment with
his girlfriend, dancer/singer Patti Mariano, who's currently in Canada
performing in "The Full Monty."

"Its very hard to maintain a life if you're in Ohio one month, in California
the next and back in New York the next. In all of my other relationships, I'd
say: 'I love you, Sweetie, but my show opens in Chicago.' And now, with Patti,
we both say that.

"So, at last, I'm with another gypsy."

[spam]@world.std.com Blair P. Houghton]

FilmChick7 <filmc...@aol.com> wrote:
>NY POST/By CLAIRE SIEGEL

>The 1968 marriage, to
>an actress he declines to name

Okay. So. Who is it?

>including a 12-week period when he worked on "The West Wing" by day and
>the play at night.

Astonishing. Unless the show was filmed in NYC for those
12 weeks, he'd have to have lived on an airplane.

--Blair
"All the real news is in the filler."

[FilmChick7]

He did "Glimmer..." in LA.