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It’s not your imagination: Ed Begley Jr. is everywhere
The longtime actor and environmentalist talks about his Gump-like career, 1970s electric cars, his crazy birth-mom story, and his love of Concord’s Walden Pond.
Simplify, simplify, as Henry David Thoreau told us.
As that Concord transcendentalist set out to live “sturdily and Spartan,” so goes Ed Begley Jr.
“I use more than I would like to, but I’m doing pretty good,” the famously green actor/activist tells me. “Thoreau inspires me in that way.”
This is a guy who drove an electric car in 1970, decades before they were big.
“When I say electric car, we’re talking about a golf cart with a windshield wiper and horn, OK? It was not exactly a babe-magnet, this car,” Begley tells me in our recent phone interview. (It cost him at least one date. More on that below.)
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As a longtime Thoreau devotee and Begley fan, my ears perked up when I learned Begley would give a virtual talk for Concord’s Walden Woods Project, the nonprofit founded by Don Henley. Begley sits on the board of the project.
Yup: “Arrested Development’s” Stan Sitwell sits on the board of the Massachusetts non-profit that was started to arrest a development.
The Eagles’ Henley told me previously that one day in 1990, he was cooking when he heard on CNN about an impending development in Massachusetts near Walden Woods.
Henley set out to arrest the development. He called on Begley to help with the Walden Woods Project. He has for decades. Begley’s Walden talk is online now.
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The son of New England-born actor Ed Begley, Begley Jr. lives so infamously green in L.A. he was Simpsonized, not to mention starred in the mid-2000s reality TV show, “Living With Ed.” The public transportation fan is the only person I’ve ever interviewed whose cherished Boston memories include “taking the wonderful T.”
Another Massachusetts connection: His sister lives in Springfield. (“I love Springfield. And I certainly love my sister.”)
Films aside, he’s popped up on TV everywhere from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to “Modern Family,” “The Office,” “Party Down,” “Monk,” “The Nanny,” and “Scrubs,” to “Better Call Saul.” And of course the Boston-set “St. Elsewhere.”
In real life, “like Forrest Gump,” he’s popped up everywhere from a Trivial Pursuit game with the Clintons, to smoking a joint at the infamous Manson ranch. Spot him “dancing like an idiot” in the background of the recent Joan Baez doc, “I Am a Noise.”
The final season of “Young Sheldon” premieres Feb. 15 on CBS, and his recent stranger-than-fiction memoir, “To the Temple of Tranquility…And Step On It!” — I love that it sounds like a play on Frank Costanza’s “Serenity now!”— is available through Walden’s site.
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I called Begley, 74, recently to talk Concord, Alan Watts, getting dragged from a bar in Mexico by John Belushi, that time he was stabbed, and living simply.
Boston.com: So how did you get involved with the Walden Woods Project?
Ed Begley Jr.: Two words: Don Henley. My dear friend. In 1990, he asked: Ed, would you be part of this nonprofit I’m starting? At first it was just a way to immediately stop the development about to occur. It became much more: land conservation, preserving Thoreau’s writings, spreading his message, making sure young people experience his work. I’m honored to be part of it.
What’s your relationship with Thoreau? Did you read him growing up?
I read “Walden” in high school, so I was happy to revisit it because I had purported to be an environmentalist since 1970. I hadn’t read Thoreau in a long time. To revisit it was another gift from my dear friend Don Henley. It was not a difficult assignment. I got tremendous joy and knowledge from it. And from seeing Concord up close and personal.
When did you first visit Walden Pond?
Back in the ’90s. I’d traveled through New England as a younger man, but hadn’t clocked the importance of Concord. So to get involved was a great gift.
I’ve tried to keep the Walden Woods Project thriving and relevant. It’s our goal to make people aware and see the importance of Thoreau now more than ever with climate change.
Absolutely. So what drew you to environmentalism in 1970, in particular?
I grew up in the San Fernando Valley which had horrible choking smog when I was young. It seared your lungs. I’m not an asthmatic but I [sniff] would [sniff] breathe [sniff] Lauren [sniff] like [sniff] this.
Wow.
Constantly sucking in another bit of air. It was that bad. [On the first] Earth Day in 1970, they said, we’re going to clean up the air and water. In 1969, the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland caught fire. I thought, now, that’s a bad sign. I saw the effects of the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969, what it did to marine life, birds. Earth Day is going to clean the air and water? Sign me up.
Right. How did you get involved that year?
I was a struggling actor; I couldn’t afford what I deep-down wanted: solar panels. But I could afford to become a vegetarian, to use vinegar and water to clean instead of harsh cleansers, to ride my bike, use public transportation. I even could afford an electric car, just not a fancy one.
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I even took the actor, the late Cindy Williams [Shirley on “Laverne & Shirley”] out in [it on a] date. Top speed of 25 mph. It started to run out of juice pulling up to the restaurant. I did not get a second date, is all I’m going to tell you, Lauren.
[laughs] Right.
But they got a lot better years later. I started driving them exclusively since 1990.
I’m interested in what sparked this deep passion for the environment so early.
My father never used the word “environmentalist” but he was one. He’d been through the Great Depression. We were taught to turn off lights, save string, save tin foil. You didn’t waste. He died within just a few days of the first Earth Day, Lauren, so I got involved as much to honor him.
It wasn’t until 1985 that I could afford solar. I also bought half of the share in a wind turbine in the California desert. That gave me the bragging rights to say I’m carbon-negative.
You said Thoreau inspires you. Do you remember the feeling you got when you first saw Walden Pond?
Oh yes. Stillness and serenity. It enabled me to practice what I try to practice when stuck in traffic on the freeway. Which is just be present for this moment. Here it comes now, Lauren: this one. Like Alan Watts says in “This Is It,” — this is it. This moment. Here it comes again: this one.
True.
It’s just sublime if you let it be. To be in Concord — to feel that serenity, to smell it and touch it — it’s magical. It’s something that you can carry with you. Bring it in line at the DMV.
Speaking of Alan Watts, I was reading your recent memoir — the title is Watts-inspired. You wanted serenity, but you wanted it now.
The irony is not lost on me now. Back then, I was: “I wanna get serene! Now, man!”
[laughs] Right.
When I got sober, I was more teachable. I remember getting very upset in the driveway with my young family. We were going up to Monterey on vacation. My wife wasn’t packing the suitcases right. I had some notes for her. Why are you putting it in that way? I was getting frustrated and aggravated. Then I went: Wait a minute. The vacation doesn’t start when I get to Monterey. The vacation starts right now in the driveway. Chill the hell out.
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If you don’t like the way the suitcases are packed, repack them yourself in a way that you find pleasing or whatever. [laughs] Cherish your time you have with your wife and kids.
Right. How did you get into Watts?
My friend gave me “This Is It.” I was type-A personality, always rushing, never enjoying the moment, always waiting for the next thing that was going to make me happy supposedly. I saw the cover of the book, I went “Ohh. This is it.” It’s not going to be better later. But you know, I wasn’t ready. I decided, “Oh, here’s an even quicker way to get serene: a bar stool and a bottle of Stolichnaya.”
Right.
That’s not sustainable. Certainly not to drink a quart of vodka every day, from 1971 to 1978, which is what I did. I would not recommend that.
You wrote that you drank a quart of vodka, a bottle of wine and took quaaludes before getting into a car accident.
Yeah. Thank God I didn’t kill anyone. If I’d killed myself, that would have been unfortunate, but fitting. I finally got well in the late ’70s and haven’t looked back.
You said that at one point, alcohol was such a big part of your day that John Belushi was concerned.
I was definitely in a worse state than John. John and [his wife] Judy tried to save me in Durango, Mexico. They dragged me out of the bar almost bodily, [saying]: You sit here every day [and] drink. It’s not healthy.
They took me out, we saw some sights around Durango. I’d been there weeks, I hadn’t even seen any of the town. John was definitely a positive influence, because I was in much worse shape than he in 1977.
You got sober in 1979.
I did. I tried in 1976 but I kept [rationalizing], “Wait a minute. I didn’t really have the DTs, I think I might have had food poisoning!” I had all these rationales. But it’s a lot easier if you do it with a group and that’s what finally worked for me.
Do you think the drinking started after your father died?
Yeah, he passed in 1970. And literally, this seems odd, but I wanted to be an alcoholic because my dad was. I wanted to be like my dad and actors like Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed. You could see they’d be drunk doing a play. I thought: I want to be like them. I don’t have the talent. What could I do to make myself more like them? I know, I’ll get drunk. I do not recommend that to the young actors out there.
You had an interesting childhood. You found out about your birth-mom after going to the DMV for your first driver’s license.
For the first time I’m holding my birth certificate in my hand. I opened the envelope. “Dad, why is there no mother’s name on my birth certificate?” Long pause. Finally: “Amanda wasn’t your mother.”
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Amanda, the woman I thought was my mom, passed away when I was 7. All the pictures on the mantel, everybody said: “That’s your mom.”
Turns out my birth-mother — who had given birth to me and my sister, Eileen, 11 months older — was Sandy. That was a double 20-megaton bomb in my head because I knew this woman Sandy. I thought she was wonderful, a little wacky, but fun. That was Mom, it turns out. I got to have a wonderful relationship with her until she sadly passed. I am truly blessed.
She was an NBC page.
She was. She and my father developed a relationship. I have no idea how he explained bringing these two kids home. Where did he find us? In an alley? I don’t know.
Your memoir is fascinating with stories like this. What sparked you to write it now?
It began innocently enough. I was just taking notes at the request of my daughter. She [wanted to] record some stories [for the family]. I started writing notes on my computer. And that’s when it happened, Lauren: The keyboard became a Ouija keyboard that actually worked. I was being pulled this way and that into some thoughts I hadn’t thought in 40, 50 years.
Wow.
Marlon Brando, OJ Simpson, Robert Blake or Charles Manson — these crazy things that have happened to me in my life. Some I’d told many times, some I hadn’t thought of in years. But you open the door to one hallway in an old windy house and that air-pressure change blows three other doors.
Some of these stories are incredible. What was your connection to the Manson ranch?
My friend James came by, and we smoked a joint. Then we went over to his friend’s David’s house, which was a treehouse, next to a saloon. You heard me right, a treehouse next to a saloon.
[laughs]
So we smoke the second joint, but that’s all we had. David suggested we go to his neighbors. We went and smoked a joint with them. And that saloon was not a real saloon. It was part of a movie set saloon, the Spahn Ranch. Roughly a year after that joint, we saw pictures of them in the newspaper. We went, “Those are the people we smoked a joint with!”
Oh my God.
It was quite unsettling, but that’s the kind of madness — like, I went to have dinner with Harry Nilsson and his wife. They said: Do you want to join us for dinner at a friend’s house? The friends turned out to be John and Yoko.
Wow.
We’re in the Dakota going up in the elevator. Wait a minute … When they say friends, the don’t mean … [uses Liverpool accent] “Hello, come on in. How are you? Wait a minute —I know you.” John Lennon, how would he possibly know who I am? After about 20 minutes: “Yoko! It’s Steve from ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman!‘” That was my character.
[laughs] That’s great.
I’m trying to keep my face from crystallizing and cracking and shattering on the floor. I’m talking to John Lennon who wants to know what Louise Lasser is like, Norman Lear.
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That’s the way my life has been: like Forrest Gump. I wind up in these situations, somehow in the background [laughs]. I was watching the Joni Mitchell documentary the other day. Who’s that tall geek dancing in the background like an idiot? Oh, God, that’s me.
[laughs] You really are like Forrest Gump. That’s unbelievable. You also wrote that you were stabbed.
I was waiting for a bus in LA. It was mid-day. Suddenly, these kids started walking towards us and just mowed us down. I got stabbed a few times and had a collapsed lung. I didn’t try to run away the way my friend Paul did. I just stood there. I didn’t do anything because I didn’t want them to think I was uptight. The way your mind works.
Wow, right.
Paul did better than me — he ran away. I had more people who were attacking me.
How many people attacked you?
Probably about 10. Eight were on me. Paul was smart enough to run and just deal with two of them. But we both survived.
Wow. And how did you get involved with Chris Guest movies? I’m such a fan of those.
I met his sister first, Elissa, the book writer. I used that as an entree to ingratiate myself to Chris Guest when I finally met him. Then I was called upon by Chris to be in “Spinal Tap” — he knew I played drums. That led to “Best in Show” which led to “Mighty Wind,” “For Your Consideration,” “Family Tree,” “Mascots,” and on. I’m just grateful to have in my life a great friend and a great collaborator.
Those movies are improvised. Do you prefer improv?
I used to like it a lot more. I can’t do it as well now that my hearing has gone down. You have to be hear [your improv partners]. I don’t attempt it anymore.
Currently, you’re on “Young Sheldon.”
It’s now in its seventh season, I’ve been on it since season 2 or 3. Fools that they are, they keep calling me back. I love working with them. This kid Iain [Armitage, who plays Sheldon] is so smart, so talented. To work with Wallace Shawn, Iain, Annie Potts. I’m a lucky man.
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What are some of your favorite roles? I mean, you’ve had so many.
“Arrested Development” is one of the best shows I’ve ever been in. Mitch Hurowitz is a comedy god. To be in a movie with Meryl Streep, “She Devil.” To work with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin on “The In-Laws.” What a gift. To be on “Better Call Saul,” “Six Feet Under.” And my first big break: “St. Elsewhere.” I won the lottery years ago.
You always wanted to be an actor?
There was a time when things slowed down right after we bought the house, I thought, “We’re going to lose the house,” so I did carpentry. I became a handyman. A lot of my actor friends did carpentry work. I’m not nearly as good as Harrison Ford, or [William H.] Macy — they’re master carpenters. I did that to support myself. But acting called me back.
If you had a few lessons to impart on readers here, what would you want them to take away?
To live simply so that others can simply live. Simplify your life.
Lauren Daley can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1.
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