Kevin Sorbo to appear at book signing in Ridgewood
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 Last updated: Tuesday October 18, 2011, 8:49 AM
The Record
A word to the wise from Kevin Sorbo: Don't think your body can't turn on you.
Even a body as bronzed and brawny as TV's Hercules.
"If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone," says Sorbo, who suffered a life- and career-changing medical emergency in 1997 and lived to tell about it in his new autobiography "True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal – and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life" (296 pages, Da Capo Press).
In the fall of 1997, with three years of the hugely popular syndicated series "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" in the can, a new movie "Kull the Conqueror" out in theaters and a seemingly unstoppable career ahead, CNN and Fox News broadcast a small item: Star Kevin Sorbo had suffered a minor aneurysm.
"The studio downplayed it; they said I was going to be fine," Sorbo says. "I'm grateful for that."
The reality was something else.
For months, Sorbo says, he had been feeling an odd sensation in the fingers of his left hand. One day in September, he felt a searing pain in his arm during a workout. While driving home from his chiropractor, his body was suddenly under siege — dizziness, vision loss, slurred speech. He was later rushed to the hospital, with fiancée and "Hercules" guest-star Sam Jenkins by his side. "I kept saying, 'I think I'm going to die today. This really sucks.' I was sort of surprised how casual I was."
Sorbo had suffered not one but three blood clots. A stroke had cut off circulation to his left arm. It came close to being amputated. "It was purple," he says.
There were hellish months of rehab, and even more hellish months of inner turmoil. Sorbo blamed God, blamed fate, blamed himself. "I went from having the body of a 21-year-old college athlete to having the body of a 90-year-old man who had trouble just crawling to the toilet," he says. "It was two years of hell, two years of brutally fighting and clawing my way back. I told my wife, 'You know what, I'm not going to commit suicide, but for the first time in my life, I can understand why people do.' "
When Sorbo went back on location in New Zealand to resume "Hercules," it was a very different Sorbo.
"I had lost 20 pounds of muscle because I couldn't work out anymore," he says. "I walked on the set and the whole crew was silent. It was like going to my own funeral. They could see how weak I'd become."
It was a hard blow to someone who had always prided himself on his physical prowess.
Sorbo was a football, basketball and baseball champ in his native Minnesota, before turning his sights to modeling and Hollywood. He landed Hercules in the 1994 TV movie "Hercules and the Amazon Women." He was a lightweight Hercules, perhaps – but it made him a heavyweight star. "Physically, the Hercules they wanted was my type," Sorbo says. "They said, 'We want an NFL quarterback type. We don't want a defensive lineman.' "
In this, and in Sam Raimi's ("Army of Darkness") spinoff TV series that was seen in more than 100 countries, Sorbo became a new kind of Hercules: jauntier, smarter, less hulking than his beefcake predecessors. But it was still a very physical role, and Sorbo joined a select club of action stars (among them Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Jackie Chan) who did most of their own stunts.
"They initially balked at it," Sorbo says. "But you know my ego, as a guy, and as an athlete. I said, 'I can do that, guys.' And they saw I could do it, that they could film me doing it, and it looked great for the show. I did have a good stunt double, who would come in to jump from a tree to a building."
In the post-stroke episodes of "Hercules," by contrast, doubles were extensively used, and other actors were brought in to take up the story slack. One of the toughest things Sorbo had to learn was how to not be Hercules – how to let other folks do the heavy lifting. It was a lesson in humility, and humanity.
"It was a hard thing to let go of," he says. "I was in damn good shape. And all of a sudden, I had to let other people do things for me. I had to realize that it's not a bad thing to have to rely on other people."
The good news, for Sorbo, is that he rebounded: He went on to major roles in TV's "Andromeda" and "The O.C.," Hollywood's "Meet the Spartans" and many other films. He's done voice work for video games like "The Conduit" and "God of War III."
The good news, for the rest of us, is that we can profit from his experience. "I want to motivate people who are going through this, or know someone who is going through this," he says. "It can happen to anybody. And you have to believe that you can recover."
E-mail: beckerman@northjersey.com
Article Source: http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/132033113_Kevin_Sorbo_to_appear_at_book_signing_in_Ridgewood.html
COURTESY PHOTO
Kevin Sorbo
"If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone," says Sorbo, who suffered a life- and career-changing medical emergency in 1997 and lived to tell about it in his new autobiography "True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal – and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life" (296 pages, Da Capo Press).
In the fall of 1997, with three years of the hugely popular syndicated series "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" in the can, a new movie "Kull the Conqueror" out in theaters and a seemingly unstoppable career ahead, CNN and Fox News broadcast a small item: Star Kevin Sorbo had suffered a minor aneurysm.
The reality was something else.
For months, Sorbo says, he had been feeling an odd sensation in the fingers of his left hand. One day in September, he felt a searing pain in his arm during a workout. While driving home from his chiropractor, his body was suddenly under siege — dizziness, vision loss, slurred speech. He was later rushed to the hospital, with fiancée and "Hercules" guest-star Sam Jenkins by his side. "I kept saying, 'I think I'm going to die today. This really sucks.' I was sort of surprised how casual I was."
Sorbo had suffered not one but three blood clots. A stroke had cut off circulation to his left arm. It came close to being amputated. "It was purple," he says.
There were hellish months of rehab, and even more hellish months of inner turmoil. Sorbo blamed God, blamed fate, blamed himself. "I went from having the body of a 21-year-old college athlete to having the body of a 90-year-old man who had trouble just crawling to the toilet," he says. "It was two years of hell, two years of brutally fighting and clawing my way back. I told my wife, 'You know what, I'm not going to commit suicide, but for the first time in my life, I can understand why people do.' "
When Sorbo went back on location in New Zealand to resume "Hercules," it was a very different Sorbo.
"I had lost 20 pounds of muscle because I couldn't work out anymore," he says. "I walked on the set and the whole crew was silent. It was like going to my own funeral. They could see how weak I'd become."
It was a hard blow to someone who had always prided himself on his physical prowess.
Sorbo was a football, basketball and baseball champ in his native Minnesota, before turning his sights to modeling and Hollywood. He landed Hercules in the 1994 TV movie "Hercules and the Amazon Women." He was a lightweight Hercules, perhaps – but it made him a heavyweight star. "Physically, the Hercules they wanted was my type," Sorbo says. "They said, 'We want an NFL quarterback type. We don't want a defensive lineman.' "
In this, and in Sam Raimi's ("Army of Darkness") spinoff TV series that was seen in more than 100 countries, Sorbo became a new kind of Hercules: jauntier, smarter, less hulking than his beefcake predecessors. But it was still a very physical role, and Sorbo joined a select club of action stars (among them Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Jackie Chan) who did most of their own stunts.
"They initially balked at it," Sorbo says. "But you know my ego, as a guy, and as an athlete. I said, 'I can do that, guys.' And they saw I could do it, that they could film me doing it, and it looked great for the show. I did have a good stunt double, who would come in to jump from a tree to a building."
In the post-stroke episodes of "Hercules," by contrast, doubles were extensively used, and other actors were brought in to take up the story slack. One of the toughest things Sorbo had to learn was how to not be Hercules – how to let other folks do the heavy lifting. It was a lesson in humility, and humanity.
"It was a hard thing to let go of," he says. "I was in damn good shape. And all of a sudden, I had to let other people do things for me. I had to realize that it's not a bad thing to have to rely on other people."
The good news, for Sorbo, is that he rebounded: He went on to major roles in TV's "Andromeda" and "The O.C.," Hollywood's "Meet the Spartans" and many other films. He's done voice work for video games like "The Conduit" and "God of War III."
The good news, for the rest of us, is that we can profit from his experience. "I want to motivate people who are going through this, or know someone who is going through this," he says. "It can happen to anybody. And you have to believe that you can recover."
E-mail: beckerman@northjersey.com
Article Source: http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/132033113_Kevin_Sorbo_to_appear_at_book_signing_in_Ridgewood.html
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