Hey, humans. How's it going?
Susan Ruth here. Thanks for listening to another
episode
of Hey Human podcast.
This is episode 423,
and my guest is Ed Begley junior. You'd
be hard pressed to not have seen a
film or television show with Ed featured somewhere
in there over the last several decades.
His career crosses genre and format,
and
I just saw a movie this last weekend,
and he was in it. And it's called
Strange Darling. And if you have not seen
this movie,
I highly recommend it. It is phenomenal.
It's not a horror movie. It's more psychological
thriller, I I think, is the best way
to describe it.
And don't don't look up anything about this
movie. Talk about a movie you have to
go in blind or else you'll ruin it
for yourself. I give it all my thumbs
and toes up. It's really, really good. So,
you know, here's Ed being an actor his
whole life and you would think that that
success that he's had would be
his focus, you know, just doing the acting
thing, but he began his passion for environmental
activism
really early on and never wavered there.
He's also a civil and human rights activist
and
a kind of person
who you know that saying, you know, show
me, don't tell me? He's a show me
guy. He shows up and he walks the
walk
and
I think that's something to really admire because
a lot of us say we're gonna do
things and we didn't really get around to
it. But he really lives the life.
About a decade ago, he was diagnosed with
Parkinson's,
and
he's still going strong, still staying healthy.
He's got a good workout
and health and wellness regime. He's so happy
and has a beautiful family
and just really,
I think,
as you know, because I'm sure you've seen
him, again, I'd be shocked, anyone that doesn't
know who Ed Begley Jr. Is, that,
he radiates a kind of kindness
and
but it's it's almost
I don't know. It's hard to explain. It's
almost ethereal in a way. Almost seems beyond
the the normal kind of human kindness because
it's it's almost this can sound so weird,
but he kind of he kind of glows
in a way.
I don't know how to explain it exactly,
but
I met him at a the first time
at a book
reading,
and
some mutual friends introduced
us. My friend, Brad, his friend, Brad, introduced
us. Brad, by the way, is the one,
thank you, Brad, who
got Ed to be on the show.
And anyway, it was very, very nice. And
then,
gosh, maybe a year later, I was having
lunch
at one of my favorite places to eat
on a Sunday,
and
he was there. And he was sitting and
hanging out with his friends,
and the cutest dog you ever saw.
And
I looked over, and I went, oh, that's
Ed Begley. So I texted Brad,
and I said, hey, your friend, Ed is
here. And Brad, of course, being Brad, who's
also a delightful human, said, go talk to
him. Go talk to him. And I said,
nope. I'm not gonna walk up to somebody
during their meal and and disturb them. I
think people who are famous very much should
be left alone when they're enjoying their family
and, you know, just let them be a
normal regular person. But, anyway,
Brad was pretty insistent, and then I get
a text
from Brad a few minutes later. He said,
I told him you were walking over, so
now you have to walk over.
And I walked over, and I said hello,
pet the dog, and
Ed pretended like he remembered me. I'm sure
he didn't. I mean, I met him one
time briefly. And as kind as he is,
it would be a lot to expect that
he would remember me. But he was so
gracious and so lovely.
And he said, oh, I I understand you
have a show, Hey Human. And I said,
yes. And he said, well, I'd love to
be on it. And
there you go. That's how that happened. And
he just so happened to have been at
Reba's or with Reba. I guess Reba was
at his house, Reba McEntire, the night before.
And I had done the song for Reba,
so I don't know. The the stars were
aligning, and it was really good.
And
regardless, he could have been
weird or or just not interested or but
no. He was the absolute opposite, radiating
kindness.
Literally radiating kindness. So
okay. Not literally.
Figuratively
radiating kindness.
I'm excited for you to hear this,
interesting life story.
I know he's got a long way to
go.
And he's got a memoir out now, The
Temple of Tranquility and Step on It, which
I read. And it is a wild ride.
It's
it's really a lot of fun and so
interesting. And
my goodness, he has lived a life so
far.
Okay.
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And thank you for listening. Be kind.
Be well.
Be love.
And here we go.
Ed Begley junior, welcome to Hey Human. So
good to be here. I think I qualify.
I'm fairly human those days. Let's see how
I do today. Hey Human accepts all. Shout
out to Brad for connecting us. Here. Here.
Yeah.
So I think a lot of people know
your backstory, but just for the sake of
setting the ball in motion, tell me a
little bit about your childhood. I was born
in Hollywood Presbyterian
Hospital, and so that's
kind of unique among my peers. Most people
came from elsewhere. They came from other states
and other parts of California or other parts
of the city, but Hollywood is has a
certain mystique to it. And I was born
in right in Hollywood and I grew up
in the valley, an area called the San
Fernando Valley you're surely aware of. And I
lived there most of my life. A bit
of time back east, my dad was doing
some stage plays. So for for a few
years there, I was out in a town
called Merrick out on Long Island, a very
nice, sleepy little town, not a highfalutin place
like Hampton. It's pretty,
simple community, and so was our home in
Van Nuys. Pretty simple, 1700 square foot home,
so
I never had a lot of grandeur growing
up.
With a father who was quite famous, did
you want to follow in those footsteps right
away, or was that just something that shaped
you slowly over time?
I definitely wanted to do what my dad
did. If my dad had been a plumber,
I'd be fitting pipe now. I'm certain of
that.
You know, I just I really
idolized him,
and there's a problem that came with that,
though. He was so good at it. He
made it look so easy. I thought, you
know, I wanna do that. Get me a
job on gun smoke. Give me a wagon
train. I'm gonna do Perry Mason. Get me
a series regular part. Pick up the phone
and call for god's sake. Get me a
job.
And, of course, he couldn't do that. He
didn't have the power to do that nor
if he had done it, I wouldn't have
appreciated, of course. He said, do you wanna
be an actor? Go do the training and
what have you. And I went on interviews
somehow for a few years, had no training,
and I never got a job, of course.
So finally, when I started to take some
classes, I began to work and I kinda
learned on the job, learned by learned while
I was doing it. Do you think you
had a sense
as you were moving through
your acting
experience
that
your self, your sense of self was rather
malleable or did
you approach it from a really grounded place?
Not at all a grounded place. I wasn't
very grounded at all. I had a lot
of
anxiety.
Most kids did most of it fairly normal.
Some of it kind of unusual and that
there was some question about who my mother
was as it turns out. Everybody in the
neighborhood knew who
my sister and I had for a real
mother, who our genetic birth mother was, but
we didn't know. And I found out unceremoniously,
discovering the day I went to get my
driver's license. I suddenly had my hands for
the first time on my birth certificate,
And so I got a big surprise that
day. But being kind of in a victim
mentality for years, I went, oh, poor me,
and I decided to use that as an
excuse to to numb myself in a number
of ways and did that over the years
with different substances and really did that from
1965
till 1960
1979,
actually. I did it for quite a few
years. I read your book Thank you, by
the way. The to the level of tranquility
and stuff on it. Great title. Thank you.
But I was thinking as I was reading
it, here's this kid
growing up in, I would consider slightly extraordinary
circumstances because of who your dad was and
then finding certain things out about yourself. Yes.
But
all the while as you're growing up there's
this humongous
event happening
in parallel to your upbringing.
How much did the Vietnam war and the
understanding of it
coalesce with your understanding of yourself and place
in the world?
It was always there. It was this for
voting, ominous kind of thing that was happening
to friends of mine,
mostly, you know, sons and daughters of the
working poor
were going to the front lines, and I
somehow magically my dad was a conservative
and, but we agreed on many things. We
did not agree about the Vietnam War, but
somehow for his son, he found some way
to get me a medical
waiver. I was, classified as a partial albino,
and I had very poor vision.
Both things, I think, were true. I think
there are degrees of albinos, and I certainly
have very fair skin, so they reasoned perhaps
correctly that I might be easier to spot
in the jungle. You know, there's no good
sunscreen back then other than the silver thing
you put on called
Afill, and I'd be like the tin man
trying to hide in the in the shrubbery
of Vietnam. But there's no joke about it,
really,
ultimately, because people came back, friends of mine,
you know, in in bags, guys that were
friends of mine, they did not come back
alive. So
I thought I'd, be one of them and
somehow got this medical waiver, courtesy of my
dad. So god bless him. I didn't ask
for it. I didn't even know what was
happening at the time. Well, no. I can't
serve. Okay. I'm I'm kinda glad, I guess,
but, you know, it's out of my hands
now. I I liked that there was an
excuse. I I wasn't a draft dodger, but
I I got a I got off.
Yeah. Was there any kind of survivor's guilt
that plagued you, or do you think it
was just one of those things? I mean,
a lot of people didn't end up getting
their number called, obviously.
Right. I had some friends who had the
number called and some who didn't, and I
can't remember what my number was before,
but I did feel survivor's guilt and
but it was the one big thing that
my dad and I disagreed with. I didn't
stand up to him much and didn't I
won't call,
I won't call it standing up. I kind
of slightly elevated in my seat, you know,
to let him know I felt a little
differently. I didn't quite think the domino theory
was viable.
Yeah. And then we were hearing things about,
you know,
the amount of people that are actually
lost over there and
the winnability of the war, and it turns
out we were right. You know, Robert McNamara
was, you know, fudging things a good deal.
And
my dad was a great guy. He went
over there to Vietnam and entertained the troops
and brought a lot of joy and solace
to their lives. They recognized his friendly face
from a lot of TV shows and movies.
So he was a great guy, and bless
him for going over there and entertaining the
troops.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Well, as I mentioned, I read your book
and it is a wild
ride.
You are
absolutely
laid bare in it, and it's funny, and
it's
scary in places, and and heartwarming and heartbreaking
in places,
and you're quite daft in moving between those
things.
I imagine
as you're putting it all on paper
and honoring those moments in your life,
it's gotta have a surreal
quality to it.
Almost out of body, did you experience that
as you're putting it all down? Yes.
There was something otherworldly and kind of,
mystical going on while writing it because I
didn't intend to write a book at all.
I was just taking notes with the help
of my daughter and her smartphone.
You know, I wanted to get down my
whole life in Hollywood.
That point, the whole 73 years of it,
I think, is when I started when I
was 73 a few years ago to get
it as much as her data plan and
battery would allow, you know, and she started
recording it. And we did a full hour
and her arm got tired. I said, well,
we'll pick up again tomorrow the next day.
In the meantime, I thought, I don't wanna
lose that idea. Maybe I'll write a few
things down on my computer, some notes to
take, you know, to take down some notes
to give her to complete the work. And
then that's what it happened, Susan. The computer
keyboard
came became like a Ouija board, but one
that actually worked where it took me to
all these different places and pulled me this
way and that way. And the stuff I
hadn't thought of in 50 years or more
was suddenly
in great detail before me, and I just
kept writing it down. And I did most
of it in the fur in the 1st
3 months.
Wow. Did you feel your dad with you
as you were writing it?
Yeah. I did feel
influenced by my father's spirit. Ancestors were among
us in some ways, so there's some sort
of energy left over. I don't think it
all ends at the point of death.
I think there's something else that happens, and
I can certainly feel his energy still, and
my mother's
the same, and other people that are dear
to me, this woman, Jeanette Pierre, that was
like a mother to my sister and I.
You know, I I feel
guided by them often to do the right
thing, and I think that's a very good
feeling.
I imagine what
LA was like in the seventies.
And I think, my gosh, I was born
too late. I would have ruled that time.
But Yeah. Whatever you've heard, double it. Yeah.
Just any anecdotal.
I I want people to read the book.
So certainly,
let's not talk about everything, but
pull out one great story from that moment
in time for you? Well, it was wonderful,
and it was horrible too because,
you know, there's a price to be paid
for drinking a quart of vodka every day
and taking medications at the same time and
snorting coke, you know, and operating a vehicle
while you're doing that. So it was terrifying.
The fact that I didn't wind up killing
anybody, I think, is a bit of good
fortune because I was
barely conscious many nights I'd be driving home.
So and but I quickly discovered that, you
know, I
got off quickly either because I was either
because I was at Begley's son or the
way I looked. How far are you from
here? Can you just can you drive yourself
home? You know, many other people in parts
of Los Angeles don't get that same warning
as I would get. You know, they'd allow
you to just drive home, and they'd follow
you home occasionally.
I don't think everybody in the city of
LA, you know,
was privy to that kind of past, you
know, that I got on occasion. So
it was terrifying at times and then
quite enlightening and quite serene when you get
away from that whirlpool of negativity
and you get some positive energy in your
life and begin to build something from it.
That was wonderful, but we we had some
fun back in the in the sixties seventies.
I won't lie. It was a lot of
fun for a while till till it wasn't.
Do you
think that it was an escapism that was
just for the times, or do you think
you were running from some part of yourself?
I was definitely running from some part of
myself. I originally you know, with pills, it's
how I started.
I stole some pills from the medicine chest,
and I just wanted to numb the pain
of finding out that my mother was not
my mother. The woman who died when I
was 7 was not my mother. This woman
that I was crazy about, my sister and
I both love somehow deeply. We barely knew
her. We're we're crazy about her. That was
indeed our mother, so
I didn't wanna go through that pain
without any assistance.
And,
so I started taking pills. And the problem
when you do that, when I started taking
pills
at about age 16,
you don't you don't grow any anymore after
that because you're numbing yourself. You're not experiencing
good or bad things. Either thing that you're
meant to learn a lesson with, you don't
you don't feel it. So when I finally
got sober in 1979, I was basically, emotionally
17 years old
because I hadn't felt the pain or the
joy of so many things.
So I I was a wreck. I'm one
of those people that also think
this is heresy to some, but I think
it's true in my case. I think drugs
and alcohol saved me before it almost killed
me, you know, because I needed some way
to numb
I I made a dangerous choice by choosing
drugs and alcohol. Some people choose therapy or
meditation or many other things that are a
lot less dangerous,
but I needed to do something. And I
I had read some Alan Watts early on,
but I didn't know how to fully implement
it. And and finally, when I started to
learn those lessons and listen to his book
called This Is It,
my life got to be a lot, lot
better.
I feel
like people like Alan Watts and Ram Dass,
and,
one of my favorite books of all time
is The Alchemist. So I'm gonna throw that
in there too. That when you take in
that kind of information,
even if
you may not be ready for it on
a grander scale, it's still absorbing into your
DNA. You're still Exactly. Yeah. And that when
you are ready for it, you'll have the
benefit of that absorption
to then implement it. But sometimes it takes
time.
Yeah. I remember being newly sober, and I
was out in the driveway
with my wife. We were gonna take a
vacation to Monterey.
We're packing up the car. It was very,
I had a lot of notes about the
way she was packing up the car. And
so I was like, don't put that in.
You put this in first. And I was
getting very upset. I was supposed to take
a vacation. I was angry because I wanted
to get that vacation. I wanna get up
to Monterey. And I was really going kind
of crazy. And she and the kids looked
at me like they were scared. And I
realized, wait a second. The vacation doesn't start
in Monterey.
It starts right here in the driveway. This
is part of the vacation. It's not Monterey
that's great. It's the journey to get there.
Whatever it is, the journey to getting on
a show like St. Elsewhere, the journey to
working with Meryl Streep, the journey to working
with Jack Nicholson, the journey to own my
own home one day, the journey to have
the grandkids one day, all that is the
experience of the process of that
is what's truly, truly joyful. And if you
don't
wake up to that at some point, as
the Alan Watts book suggests, this is it.
This moment right now with you, Susan,
is really all there is. We can certainly
remember the past, so we don't make the
same mistakes and we can plan for the
future. So I make sure I eat dinner
tonight.
You can make some plans for the future
and remember the past a bit, but you
don't wanna dwell there. You wanna stay in
this moment here comes again right now, this
one
where I have every single thing that I
need.
And if I let it be, it's perfectly
blissful being here with you, and it really
is
when you just let it be. And and
I've gotten very good at that. And that
book, I can't say it enough. Alan Watts
book, this is it. If you're just in
an enlightened mood walking past the window where
the book is sitting there for sale,
think about it. This is it. It's not
happening later. This is not a dress rehearsal.
Not gonna happen when you get to Monterey.
It's happening right now in the driveway before
you ever leave from Monterey.
Wake up to it.
It takes a lot of the pressure off
because
we never
ever
can get to the future,
and we've left the past.
Well, there's no way to get that either.
Even 10 minutes ago, it's gone.
It's a
it's in the ether.
Yes. And I think we do we're told
by a lot of outside voices,
what are you gonna do next? What are
you gonna do next? But
that's just a recipe for absolute anxiousness.
It's not that you can't think,
you know, someday, like you said, I wanna
have a house or I wanna have kids,
but there also needs to be room to
grow into those experiences because we don't know
which door is going to open. It might
be 12 doors, and then
you have to pick and walk through. And
then maybe that door didn't work, so you
walk back out and you go through another
door, and you keep trying. And if it
didn't work, if there were not tangible results,
people wouldn't be doing it. You know? People
would have stopped it long ago. There would
be no Ram Dass, no Alan Watts, no
Sai Baba. Those people would not have devotees
or know who they be who we know
them to be because people go, well, I
didn't really feel I did that thing of
being in the moment, and I didn't get
anything out of it. If it didn't actually
work,
it wouldn't be, you know, still surviving for
1000 of years. It's been, you know, going
in many parts of the world in India
and different
parts of Europe and all over. People have
tried it, and it's worked, And that's why
we continue to do it to this day.
So
give it a try. I did it also
in my acting career. I was always trying
to get an interview for a job, get
the interview, get the job, get the paycheck,
learn the lines, do the job, get another
job. I wasn't experiencing any joy in the
actual moment of doing it, the learning of
the lines and the performing of the lines
and all the money investigating the character.
All that can become joyful if you let
it be. But if you're just always trying
to get onto the next thing, you never
had any joy enjoyment and indeed bliss in
right now.
Yeah. If you keep moving the goalposts,
how do you ever win?
You don't. I sure wasn't winning in those
years. You said something in the book that
really struck me, and you said, I'm in
no hurry.
And
I'm curious.
That's
the words of a younger man
who thinks they have their life ahead of
them. Right? And rightfully so. Now that you
have a few more years on you,
are you in a hurry now at all?
I, many years, started to get good about
that. When I got sober is when it
really started to make a a difference. And
I got better at it. 1980
was better than 1979, and 81 was better
than 80. And I get continue to get
better, but there's really no backsliding. It's the
point now.
I almost never I can't tell the last
time I was stressed or
yelled at another driver, anything like that. The
solution is very good nuts and bolts solution
to all that stuff. If you're stressed in
traffic,
two words, leave
earlier.
You know, just
I go to Santa Monica for an appointment.
Of course, there's gonna be traffic on the
4:0:5. So just leave earlier, do the crossword
when you get there or whatever you wanna
do. We just sit there and meditate,
but there's tools to do this. And when
I get to four way intersection, I always
let everybody go before me because I'm in
no hurry. Maybe they are in a hurry.
Maybe they have a medical emergency. Who knows
what people have? Maybe they're about to get
fired because they're gonna be late. Let the
others go. I have no rush about anything
anymore.
What a great way to live. It's it's
so much, much, much better.
Sounds like a person who knows how to
live in grace, especially
if you see other people as
also being important, which is what that is,
letting them go first.
And gratitude is a perfect lubricant for all
of that. It gets all that stuff really
working and running smoothly
to really be in gratitude, to to figure
out fairly early in my life, wait a
minute. It's not a bad thing that Ed
Begley is my father. I used to think,
don't compare me to him. I'm different. I'm
my own man, and I don't wanna be
compared to him. It was a big plus
having him for a father. People remembered my
name. People were inclined to hire me for
jobs because they thought I might be good
because I'm his son. Nothing but a plus,
but I I viewed it as a minus
and began to accept how lucky I I
was to be born at Begley's son. I
won the lottery. I didn't even buy a
ticket.
Then have all the other breaks that I
got over the years in and out of
my career from different police officers and people
who let me slide. Now some would argue
that with some substance behind it, maybe people
who let me off the hook for things
like that, they're enabling me in my alcoholism,
and that's probably true too.
You know, I didn't have the kind of,
the kind of challenges that some people had
with that kind of bad behavior. I could
have I could have really hurt somebody. That's
what I just keep thinking of every day.
So that's another reason to never try that
behavior again. What what you could have done
to an innocent person or persons
is, is terrifying.
Did your dad ever step in and say,
what are you doing, or was he doing
his own life? He was sober for about
18 years when he passed away.
I was 20. So the 1st 2 years
of my life, he was drinking a bit.
I remember him being drunk one night. Pretty
certain he was drunk by the way he
was behaving. It's a very, very young, very,
you know, traumatic memory,
but I remember that.
And, fortunately,
you know, he
he got sober and stayed sober, and he
knew I was having a problem at some
point because the pills were missing from his
medicine chest, and he reasonably
figured out it was me that was doing
it. Then when I got arrested on on
acid in 1969,
he took me to Synanon
to see if maybe they could help me.
They were more about getting off heroin than
LSD. They didn't know that much about that
in 1969.
So I just went there for a day
and lied to everybody. So, no, I wasn't
on LSD. I was hypnotized. Somebody hypnotized me.
That was my excuse. Back in 1969,
I'm not an asset. I'm hypnotized. That's a
good one. How they kept a straight face
at that, I'm not sure. I did a
lot of acid in high school. It was
it was hypnotizing
for sure. Yep.
For sure.
You, of course, are very well known for
your activism
and environmentalism,
And I think there is an idea
that all hope is lost, and so why
bother at this point?
I I would love for you to speak
to that because I think in general, you're
an
optimism guy.
Let's talk about that a bit.
There's 2 big lies about the environment. There's
many little ones, but the 2 big ones
are.
And there's certain news outlets that promote this
a lot. There's no problem at all. Back
to your house, there's nothing to see. It's
just people trying to be the nanny state
and tell you what to do, and people
trying to make things cost more. There's no
problem with climate change and no problem with
anything. Don't bother doing any of this stuff
because it's not needed. That's one lie. The
other lie that's every bit as dangerous as
it's so far gone. There's nothing that we
can do.
And there certainly are huge challenges with climate
change and many other things, but think about
what we have done, what's quantifiable, what we've
done already.
That's huge. We have 4 times the cards
in LA for 1970,
millions more people, yet we have a fraction
of the smog. If we had just the
same amount of smog from 1970, it was
bad. I lived here.
We'd go, wow. Four times the cars, millions
more people, and it didn't get worse. We're
fantastic.
That's not what happened at all. It got
to be much, much less because everything that
we hoped would work did work. You know,
cleaner vehicles, cleaner power plants, all the stuff
we did
worked because we really got tough. We did
it with something called the Clean Air Act,
which was signed by Richard Nixon of all
people.
So it takes a bipartisan
effort to do some things. We had that
in LA, thank God, and the air got
much, much now we still have people near
the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
There are shipping centers, fulfillment centers, there are
freeway interchanges that are breathing dirty air. We've
gotta clean that up for them, but we've
proven that we can do it. Ozone depletion,
we had a problem. I'm sure you've heard
of years ago with the CFCs that were
damaging the ozone. That's a global problem like
climate change. We said no more CFCs.
We're not gonna ever use CFCs again. We're
gonna ban them. People said the naysayers once
again jumped in and said, it'll be so
expensive. You won't be able to buy a
refrigerator.
Nobody could ever buy an air conditioning unit
again if you banned CFCs.
I'm told that they still sell both those
products. Have you heard?
I think they're still selling refrigerators and air
conditioning units. Yeah. They just banned CFCs, and
they found another way to
to keep them cool, you know, with another
substance that isn't nearly as damaging to the
ozone.
And look what we did. We made a
problem on a global way in that way,
so we can do with climate change. Now
having said that, I'm not living in a
dream world. There's much
much to be done and much that's gonna
be damaged. Whatever we do, there's so much
in the pipeline now. The oceans are so
warm. There's so much
plastic in the oceans. There's so many
things like the damage of the coral reefs,
the bleaching of the coral reefs, and
so many things, loss of species. I mean,
how many rivets can you lose from an
airplane before it ceases to fly? And we're
losing these rivets
from the airplane, which keeps us all aloft,
though, and that's the web of life that
keeps us going.
And if you lose too many of those
rivets, those being the many plant and animal
species that we need,
it's gonna be the end of us. So
we have to do it for our own
survival. It's not just save the whales or
save
the earth. It's saving ourselves,
and we can do it. We've proven that
we can in big, big ways.
Is your activism
toward these things
I mean, I think if you're paying any
attention as a human being, you see the
things around you. But did you grow up
in a family that was aware of this
stuff, or were you the pied piper trying
to lead everyone?
My dad was the influence in this way
too. And I'm telling you,
he never really used the word environmentalist, but
he was one because he was a son
of Irish immigrants. He lived through the great
depression,
simply turned off the lights, turned off the
water, saved string, saved tinfoil. You know, he
was a conservative that liked to conserve.
So when he died within a few days
of the first Earth Day, I did everything
that I could to honor his legacy. And
I started, you know, composting. I became a
vegetarian. I started
riding my bike even more. I took public
transportation, even more
non toxic soaps and cleaners, all that stuff.
And I found very quickly that it was
not only good for the environment. It was
good for my pocketbook. I was saving money.
I did it starting in 1970 and pretty
soon I had enough money to buy a
little solar oven. Pretty soon I had saved
enough money to buy a rain barrel to
collect rainwater.
And after 15 years of doing it, I
finally had solar solar hot water in my
house in Ojai.
Then 20 years after the 1st birthday, I
could have finally afford solar electric, and I've
had solar electric ever since 1990, and it
works great. So
start slow.
You know, I'm kind of a fiscal conservative
myself. I don't wanna buy something I can't
afford. I didn't try to buy solar panels
in 1970
as a broken struggling actor, and his father
wasn't around to bail him out. I just
did what I could with bike riding and
public transportation,
things that I could afford and save money
and did things as I as I could
do them. I think that's the key that
people get overwhelmed with the idea of
they have to start in in a giant
way, and,
tiny steps are still steps.
Yeah. All or nothing is that people get
hung up on that. They make a long
list of or a short one or a
list at any rate of these things that
they can't do. I'm not interested in that
list. That's the list. Put it aside.
What is the list what's the list of
things that you can do? Much more interesting
list. Can you ride a bike if weather
and fitness permit? Can you take publish public
transportation if it's available near you? Can you,
you know, buy an energy efficient light bulb?
Can you buy an energy saving thermostat?
Make that list up of the things that
you can do,
then go down the line, and you will
save money, I guarantee it, to do other
things so you can afford them. It's pretty
straightforward.
I wanna pivot and talk about love and
sex.
You
famously had some
relationships going. You talk about in the book.
You were a ladies' man, I think, is
what the term would be as you were
growing up and have been married and have
beautiful children and are married now.
What is your
how has your
thoughts on love changed through your life? I'm
not sure I was ever a ladies' man,
but I was with some amazing women. I
had some amazing women in my life. My
first wife was extraordinary
in every way. My current wife is, of
course, and I I did date a bit
in the seventies and the eighties, so I
won't lie about that. But I
I just lucky to have met these great,
powerful, smart, wonderful
women, and
I just feel blessed.
I don't know what they saw on me.
I'm still trying to figure that out. Apparently,
I'm amusing.
But, other than that, I'm not sure what
they see in me. And all the all
the people that I've gone with over the
years, all the wonderful women I've known over
the years, I'm still friendly with them. I
can't think of one that I'm not happy
to see. So
there's a plus to that. I I must
have done something right.
Well, you must know that you're a lovely
man, that you have a good heart, and
you
try your best.
I mean, that was pretty clear as I
was reading the book that you were always
striving even, I think, even in your addiction.
And maybe that's the older person writing about
the younger person,
but there seemed to be a sense that
you did care
deeply. I did. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. That
people respond to that. And that is the
basis of what love is, is a a
deep caring.
And whether or not you at the time
are able to commit
to what the vulnerability around that means and
all that. But I that's why I'm wondering,
looking back as an older person,
how love has shaped your life and and
shaped you.
I mean, I think it's deeper than just
like, oh, shucks. You know, I'm just a
regular guy. No. You're right. It it has
shaped me, and I've been guided by these
powerful women. Some of with whom I've had
a relationship, I've been very much guided by
them and
felt and experienced a great deal of love
from,
you know, my some of my long term
relationships.
All of my relationships, really, I've felt a
great deal of love from the women that
I've known over the years. Has it taught
you now to
love and and see yourself as worthy and
deserving?
Yes. I'm much better at that now. I've
really opened my heart in many ways since
the late seventies, since I finally got sober.
Unfortunately, I had the addiction of drugs and
alcohol, then there's a few other addictions that
remained for about another decade, and that was
gambling and then philandering. I hadn't entirely gotten
well in every area of my life,
but I've gotten better at it.
This is my second marriage much, much better.
I've decided to remain true to all of
the vows, not just the ones I found,
you know,
easy to tick off.
Yeah. Sure. So, you know, I'm doing much
better in this marriage than I did in
my first.
My first wife was wonderful beyond measure, but
I wasn't grown enough to appreciate it and
to value it. So I decided to try
it again and and do better, and I've
been quite successful this time around. And it's
by ex exactly what you suggest by opening
my heart and being vulnerable and jumping off
the high dive and and hoping that there's
water in the tank by the time you
get down to the bottom. And doing it
anyway even if there's not. Exactly. That's the
hardest part about love is
to to do it no matter what the
outcome will be. That's again staying in the
present.
I choose to love in this moment,
and whatever happens, happens. I found that to
be true very much so.
I'm excited because on Saturday,
I get to see your new movie,
strange darling.
Yes. I just saw it the other night.
It's really
it's it's a chiller. It's kind of graphic,
so be prepared for that. But it's very,
very good. It's a very smart movie.
It's,
really, it's got some huge surprises. It's gotten
unanimously good reviews. Every review I've seen at
New York Times,
Detroit Free Press,
Arizona Republic, all the reviews I've seen have
been very, very good. Rotten Tomatoes gave it
a 100%.
I saw that. Very exciting. Doing very well.
We'll see how the box office is. That
starts tomorrow. That's the ultimate, you know, benchmark
is how well it does with actual box
office numbers.
Sure. Of course. Well, I have a strict
rule. I don't look at trailers. I don't
read up about a movie. I just go
to the movie. I love going to the
movies, so I'm super excited. That's the way
to do it. Let's talk a minute about
your diagnosis. You were diagnosed with Parkinson's.
How has that
been for you? How was that in that
moment, and and where is that taking you
in life?
It was a tough diagnosis to receive,
but I knew something was up. Back in
2004, I lost about half my sense of
taste and smell and was having trouble with
my balance, but I thought I just getting
older, I had some reaction to something.
I got some virus or something. Nobody knew
quite what it was. And a full 12
years later,
I went to a speech therapist. I was
starting to have trouble with my addiction. I
wasn't being as clear as I used to
be as an actor, as a person
talking to another human being. And so I
went to a speech therapist after the first
session.
She inquired with the rest of my medical
team, said, Why is it not in Ed
Begley's chart that he has Parkinson's? And nobody
had figured out that I had Parkinson's because
nothing was really presenting
in a noticeable way. The things that I
was doing, I somehow never did them at
the doctor's office. I'd have a little bit
of what they call pilling like this on
manufacturing. Now, like you're trying to hold a
pill between your thumb and forefinger, and it
kind of wiggles a bit. I never did
that once in any of the different tests
I had. They thought I had a brain
lesion.
They tested for that. I didn't have it,
but I never exhibited those things because I
was in very good health. Every day, I'd
ride my bike up to Mull and drive
then around Franklin Canyon Lake,
around that reservoir. And I just kind of
every day just kept riding, even though it
got harder and harder. And just kept riding,
even though it's got harder and harder. And
there's nothing better to keep Parkinson's at bay
than rigorous out outdoor or indoor exercise. So
I did that every day, and I used
to do the whole upper body circuit
at the gym,
and still I do that to this day.
So it took me 12 years, even though
I had it. It's been 8 years since
I got diagnosed.
And every time I see my neurologist, which
I just saw him,
just a few weeks ago, he said, If
I was grading on the bell curve, you'd
be the head of the class. Keep doing
whatever you're doing. So I'm doing what he
says in the way of medication.
There's something called Ryteri, which is carbidopalevodopa.
I do that, but then I also do
hyperbaric chamber, something called NAD.
I do something called glutathione,
and,
I do lots of things and exercise every
day that really help you in other ways
besides the normal medication.
And it turns out to be a big
plus for me. May not work for everybody,
but it certainly made my life, my Parkinson's,
easier to adapt to. And so I'm still
working as an actor a good deal. And
on several different shows, I said, I wanna
thank you so much. I'm glad that we
had such a good time in the show,
and I'm sorry it's over, but thank you
for being so understanding about my Parkinson's. They
said, you're what?
My Parkinson's. You guys remember you've
The day you'd love me to do this
and that. They said, No, we just know
you're a man in your 70s. We had
no We didn't know you had Parkinson's,
so I've been getting away with it for
a while. Then I decided to talk about
it in the book, perhaps help others,
and I'm glad I did because a lot
of people have called me for advice on
it, and I've told them what's worked for
me.
Again, there's no guarantee it's gonna work for
them, but try it. But if these things
help you, you know, as it does, I
I firmly believe in the AMA solution too,
which is medications can help out a good
deal. The ones that I've taken have helped
me, but also try these other things that
may help you a good deal because medications,
the more you take them, the less they
work. So you have to keep upping the
dosage, so that's something to be aware of
and, you know, to adapt to. Well, certainly,
going into it, the fact that you are
so healthy, I mean, I you are truly
the only person I know that could ride
a bike up Mulholland.
So I know. I don't think I could
do that anymore, but I did it till
just a few years ago.
That's a feat for sure. Yeah. The things
that life throws at us. I mean, obviously,
that's that's a big deal. Parkinson's is a
big deal. And that you are,
again, staying in the moment with it and
being like, well, I'm doing what I can
do.
And I think back again as reading your
book and all these different scenarios
you were in
cheating death, certainly.
I mean Definitely.
Partying with Charles Manson, that one rang a
few bells. Yeah. I know. The situations I
put myself in through drugs and alcohol, I
mean, it's just crazy.
We just went to this house
of a a friend of his, and we
smoked to join with a bunch of hippies
there. And I later
see the LA Times under the picture of
those same people, and that they turned out
to be the Manson Gang. Me and my
friend, James, went and just smoked to join
with a friend. And when I get out
of it,
meeting with people that were extremely dangerous, I'm
I'm just grateful that nothing ever happened as
a result of my very brief encounter with
them.
Yeah. Lucky. Lucky.
The you talk a lot about
the lineage of actors in this town in
in LA.
And, certainly, that has been a big topic
of conversation.
That is not to
say that the people who are descendants
of actors who have already been successful that
I mean, they still have to do the
work. They still have to be good at
their job.
But for people that are looking to get
into the business, let's say, who are don't
have the benefit of being born into one
of the royalty of Hollywood.
Do you have any advice? Any advantage that
you can use? Any
any device that's, ethical, legal that you can
use to try to get work? I think
it's fair game.
I I mentioned earlier that I I didn't
wanna trade in my father's name, and I
was even gonna register with Screen Actors Guild
as James Begley, so I wasn't Ed Begley
junior and let people guess if I was
related,
and I didn't do that. I'm glad I
listed myself as Ed Begley junior because it's
a very positive thing. Number 1, they're gonna
remember my name. That's good at any job
interview. You're trying to excel at, you know,
law, medicine, sports, show business, whatever. They remember
your name. That's number 1. And number 2,
if they
know your parents or some relative close to
you, they're gonna be inclined to be rooting
for you. They have something to talk about
in the job interview. I work with your
dad in a Philco Playhouse. He was fantastic.
We did a show on Broadway too called,
odds against tomorrow, and so I I just
wanna say good luck, Eddie. Top of page
8. Good luck. We're all pulling for you,
pal.
So that's the kind of thing that happened.
I got, you know, a lot of help
from people
who like my dad, and how can that
be a bad thing? It was a very
big plus.
Take anything that you can use to your
advantage
and and use it, and and I did.
And you gotta deliver.
I mean, it's not Rob Reiner is not
just the son of Carl Reiner. He's a
brilliant director, brilliant actor. He's great. Liza Minnelli
is not just Judy Garland's daughter. She's much,
much more.
These talented people sometimes, they get lucky through
through birth, and then they do something incredible
with it, and and many people have. I'd
like to think I have, to a certain
extent, improved on what my dad handed me.
Be bold. I know people have come up
to me and said, you know,
can you keep me in mind for this
show with that? And sometimes when I can't
help, I do.
And I look to see
make sure that they know what they're doing
and go see them in a play or
something or look at a clip that they
have, look at their reel, make sure they're
qualified to do the work. If I'm gonna
recommend them to a casting agent, I have
to know something about the work. I can't
just recommend somebody.
Yeah. But,
I urge people to be bold and do
whatever it takes to really, you know, without
being a stalker or something with a casting
office, you know, to just do what's ethical
and proper and
and just go out there and do the
footwork and just keep trying because you'll hear
no a lot. Then one day, you'll hear
maybe. Then one day, finally, you'll hear yes.
And which is true of even your life.
I mean, it sounds like as as I'm
reading, it it sounded like you you didn't
get everything. You too had to work hard
to get
indoors and be heard and seen.
I did. After 15 years of it, I
was ready to move to Atlanta. I was
gonna sell the house. My first wife Ingrid
and I had bought because just after 15
years, I said to her, you know,
I don't care if it's law, medicine, show
business. You know, if you're not really getting
to where you want to get in some
way,
after a decade and a half, it's time
to mix it up.
I'll go to we'll go to Atlanta. I'll
try to get a job as a local
weatherman or something and try to one day
get a talk show in Atlanta. He is
big fish in a small town.
You know, all I know is show business,
so I wanna still work in show business,
but it's not working here in LA. The
ring, the phone rang.
What do you mean? What? Wait a minute.
Slow down. What's the saying elsewhere? I don't
know what that even means. And it was
just hospital show in the eighties, and I
had an interview for that. And I went
and read for a part and didn't get
it.
I got another part that had, like, 2
lines, a small part.
The part I wanted wound up being
shot in the 2nd season.
So my plans for my life and my
career
have never been good near as good as
what the universe has thrown me, so I'm
blessed. And if you want that kind of
blessing, you gotta do the footwork first. Do
you think about,
the what happens at the end of the
of this corpus and
what comes
on the other side? Is that something you
think about? I try not to dwell on
it too much, but again, as I mentioned
earlier, I just can't imagine that's it. The,
you know, the heart stops pumping and the
cells eventually die, and it all just stops.
I suppose that's possible, but that's the most
farfetched of all the possible scenarios.
More likely is if there's something
after and there was something before, and it's
perhaps like the Hindu the Hindu religion believes
that there's, you know, like a big bang
and a big crunch. There's
a infin
infinitesimally
small one thing, then there's many things. The
universe goes on. I think it's something like
that. I think the big bang
is where it all comes from, and I
think perhaps there's even a big crunch one
day out.
Hope it doesn't hurt when it happens.
Well,
you know, if by the time the big
crunch happens,
hopefully, it will be millions millions of years
in the future and will have lived a
1000000 different lifetimes by then.
Wouldn't that be nice?
Yeah. It would be. And, you know, it'd
be time for a nap by then. I
think so too. I'm ready for a nap.
Alright. So the book is To the Temple
of Tranquility
and Step on It. Well, how did that
that you said in the book that that
was something that someone had said to you.
It's such a great
juxtaposition
of
how humans live their life. I I just
love it. The great actor Dick Stahl
is the one who said it. I'm told
he didn't just say it on stage as
he did many times as an improv actor
or in a movie or a TV show,
which he was also brilliant. Dick Stall was
his name, and he, like me, was very
smitten with the Maharishi when the Beatles went
to him back in the sixties. And so
we all thought that was fantastic, and he
wanted to get somebody who is that practice
those kinds of,
spiritual
ways. And so
he had planned a very, like I would,
a very type a personality kinda trip. He
was gonna go from LAX to Hawaii, and
from there, get a plane to the Philippines.
And from there, he got a berth on
a merchant marine vessel
to get to this island, then to another
place on a smaller boat. Everything was planned
out perfectly with nothing could go wrong, but
that first plane was late leaving LAX.
And so it just barely missed a flight
to the Philippines. And from there, he had
to wait a week because it was monsoon
season to get another shift to get to
the smaller island. Finally, when he ran up
the dock and hopped in a little
little, like, a rickshaw to get to the
place, he said to the driver, he said,
the temple of tranquility and step on it.
So the driver started to laugh and so
did he. He thought it was absurd, and
I did too. So when it came when
it came time to write a book, I
thought that was a perfect title. It's such
a perfect
description of what it's like to be a
human being. I just love it so much.
Ed, tell people how they might find you,
learn more about what you do, and and
the things going on in your life, and
and the book, and everything.
Go to edbegley.com.
That's where you can find out more information
about what's going on.
I'm on,
Twitter. Well, I'm not on Twitter. I'm still
on x. I haven't figured out how to
exit yet. And I'm on Instagram,
and it's
ed_begley_jrfordjunioron
Instagram. That's where to find me.
And,
you can buy the book at your local
bookstore,
or you could certainly buy it at Barnes
and Noble. Those kind of stores, you can
buy it, at Amazon and
elsewhere. Just search Ed Begley book. It'll come
right up. And I'll put links on heyhumanpodcast.com
with all of your stuff so that it's
easy for people to find it. Thank you
so much, Susan. I really appreciate it. It's
been lovely speaking with you. This has been
great. Thank you. You too. You're great to
talk to. Thank you. Thank you, Susan. Thank
you, and thank you for listening, everybody.
Bye.
Lots of love.
Great. Review and subscribe to Hey Human podcast
on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast.
Thank you,