The Unusual Suspect

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Acknowledgments

God . . . thank You for waiting . . . giving me the choice . . . now I get it! I need You now . . . more than the air I breathe . . . I am yours . . . I will do ANYTHING . . . !

Kennya, Alaia, Hailey . . . my gifts . . . my earthly joy . . . my friends . . . my angels . . . ! God knew what I needed . . . to see Him . . . !

Mom, Dad, and all of my brothers and sisters and their families . . . I love you all . . . more than any words can say . . . see you all in heaven!

Carl Johnson & my New City Gospel Fellowship family . . . thanks for all the spiritual food, worship, love, support and prayers for me & the girls.

Luis Palau Association . . . Luis, Pat, Kevin, Keith, Andrew, Steve and all of your families . . . & the entire staff at LPA . . . The Lord has blessed me . . . with all of your love, support, prayer and guidance.

Pastors . . . A. R. Bernard, Ravi Zacharias, John Carter, Michael Hayes, Michael Fletcher, Floyd Nichols, Zane Anderson, Chuck Swindoll, Raul Ries, Jay Hazlip, Zeny Tinouco, Bob Coy, Shelly Sampson, Matt Potterbin.

Fellow Soldiers . . . Jonathan Spinks, Carl Ritter, Paul Rodgers, Todd Hendricks, Tom Maharis, Gary Heavin, Michael Esposito, Michael Smith, Daniel & David Gonzalez, Hill Bowman . . . thank you and all your families.

The Skate Family . . . Paul Anderson . . . yo bro . . . thanks for starting it all, Darren Wells, Christian Hosoi, Jay Alabama, Rick Weigele, Lance Mountain, Ray Barbee, The Livin' It Crew, listed at Livinit.com.

Gary Terashita . . . thank you for believing . . . your passion . . . and most of all . . . your strong gutsy vision . . . so God would speak through this book.

Special thanks to the Warner Faith family, particularly David Young, Maureen Egan, Rolf Zettersten, Chip MacGregor, Chris Murphy, Harry Helm, Jean Griffin, Lori Quinn, Jana Burson, and Cara Highsmith.

Mark Tabb . . . aka "Tabby" . . . Praise the Lord for bringing together . . . a wild fire . . . and beautifully gifted wisdom . . . you said it best . . . "This ain't work . . . this is fun!" Thanks again.

Friends . . . Pat Reaves, Michael Kingman, Lawrence Holdrige, Alex d'Adrea, Lawrence Fishburn, Paul McCormick, Corey Kilgannon, Matt Greacen, Sam Rockwell, Keith Diamond, the Bevilacqua family, Dan Martineau & family, and all other friends listed at stephenbaldwin.com.

Louis & John Greacen & family . . . thank you for your example, perseverance, faith & prayers that our Lord has honored . . . you are with me always . . . I love you guys . . . !

The Body of Christ . . . please keep praying . . . learn His word . . . never take yours eyes off "JESUS" . . . let's kick some butt . . . for His kingdom . . . ! ! ! God Bless.

Faith

Main Entry: faith¹

Pronunciation: 'fAth

Function: noun

Inflected Form(s): plural faiths /'fAths, sometimes 'fAthz/

Etymology: Middle English feith, from Old French feid, fei, from Latin fides; akin to Latin fidere to trust—more at BIDE

1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : LOYALTY b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions

2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God(2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof(2) : complete trust

3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs

synonym see BELIEF

- in faith : without doubt or question : VERILY

Introduction

An Unusual Experience

The weirdest part of being a celebrity is the awkward moment when someone stops me on the street and says, You look familiar. Where do I know you from? I usually play along and say, "I don't know." They keep staring at me, and it's hilarious because I can see they are doing a Google search of their brain trying to figure out how they know me. Did we go to high school together, they will ask. I play along, smile and say, "I don't know, dude, where did you grow up?" Saskatchewan. "Huh. I'm from Long Island." So they start Googling some more, but they keep coming up with more wrong information because they typed a wrong word into their search engine.

After a while they finally hit the right key and this funny kind of embarrassment comes over them as they start to realize I'm a celebrity. Wait a minute, they say, are you a Baldwin? "Yeah, how are you? Pleased to meet you, Stephen Baldwin, always a pleasure," I stick out my hand and say. This is followed by a long pause and more often than not they come back with, No you're not! I tell them it's really me, but they stand there and argue with me. This has even gone on to the point where people ask to see my driver's license. When it reaches that point I excuse myself and tell them I really don't have time to argue over whether or not I am in fact STEPHEN BALDWIN.

Now, however, I get this version where I'm walking down the street and a young lady will stop me and say, Are you Stephen Baldwin!? I say "Yeah, nice to meet you." She will let out a little screech and say something like, Oh my gosh! I can't believe it's you. Then she will say, Are you really a Christian? I go, "Yeah, giving my life to Christ is an awesome experience." And then she will take a half step back, look at me with a look of total shock and say, No you're not.

I can't win, but I can understand her surprise because I have to say to all you people out there who can't believe Stevie B is now a Christian, no one is more shocked by this turn of events than me. I'm the last guy on this planet I ever figured would wake up every morning and say, "Thanks God, what do You want me to do today?" Now this faith defines who I am. Is that not the craziest thing you've ever heard?

BALONEY

The Bible says faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1). Up until a few years ago that sounded like a bunch of baloney to me. How could anyone in their right mind buy into that? It wasn't until after I became a Christian that I remembered how much I loved bologna when I was a kid. Growing up on Long Island I ate bologna all the time, but then I grew up and my tastes became more jaded and I quit eating it. Only kids like that stuff. Me, I was too sophisticated, too refined, too grown-up to throw some bologna between a couple pieces of bread and chow down.

I think this same logic kept me from exploring God for so long. My parents drug me to church when I was little, but once I got old enough to choose for myself I never went back. Why should I? In my mind God was for kids, just like bologna. It wasn't until I was willing to dial back the clock and have the mind-set of a child that I was able to understand what this faith was all about.

What I didn't know then but I now know is that everyone must do the same thing. According to Jesus, the only way anyone will ever understand what appears to the grown-up mind to be nothing but baloney is to stop looking through the cynical eyes of an adult and embrace it with the heart of a child.

Yeah, that was easy for you to do, Stephen, because you never grew up. I'll give you that. But my lifelong unwillingness to kick to the curb that innate playfulness we have when we are kids didn't make me any more likely to be a candidate to sign on to the whole Jesus movement thing. If anything, it kept me from getting too close to it. I remember growing up watching the adults around me. Most of them appeared to be so caught up in being responsible citizens that they forgot how to enjoy life. They acted like you might as well stick your head in an oven the day you turn forty. And a lot of those people were the very ones who talked about God in their lives. Why would I want to become a part of that?

I didn't then and I still don't want to today. Stephen Baldwin, the fun Baldwin, refuses to become part of something old and stale and boring. That's part of what has surprised me about this thing called faith. Through it God replaced my jaded, cynical, been-there-done-that eyes with a whole new way of seeing the world. Further and perhaps even more surprising is I've come to this faith in a more intense and hardcore way than I could have possibly imagined.

I feel like I have gone skydiving and I'm falling from the sky toward earth at 120 miles per hour. The wind is howling in my ears and whipping across my face. But somehow, I feel calm and at peace. I'm not afraid. In fact, I'm absolutely positive that I am free from any danger. I feel all these things all at once with the full knowledge that I chose to jump out of a perfectly good airplane without a parachute!

This skydiving experience is what this book is all about. Listen, I'm not trying to come off like some kind of expert on the Christian faith. I'm just a guy from Long Island who had all his preconceptions about God blown away when I took a chance and embraced faith. In the pages that follow I'll tell you how and why I took such a radical step.

I also invite you into the mind of Stevie B as I let you in on what I have come to understand during my first few years on this path called Christianity. There's stuff in this book that will make you laugh, and stuff that will make you mad. I may use some language you're not used to, and I ask your forgiveness now if any of it offends as that is not my intent. One of my discoveries about the faith community is that we can often be more concerned about the inconsequential than the eternal. My prayer is that by the time you close the back cover you will be willing to take a chance, drop your guard, and enter into an experience like the one I'm having with God.

Sure, it might all sound like a pile of baloney, but bologna never tasted so good.

Purpose

Main Entry: ¹purpose

Pronunciation: 'p&r-p&s

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English purpos, from Old French, from purposer to purpose, from Latin proponere (perfect indicative proposui) to propose—more at PROPOUND

1 a : something set up as an object or end to be attained : INTENTION b : RESOLUTION, DETERMINATION

2 : a subject under discussion or an action in course of execution

synonym see INTENTION

CHAPTER 1

Celebrity vs. Reality

People constantly ask me for details of my "Damascus Road" experience (see Acts 9) that made me give my life to Jesus Christ. Most assume I hit bottom and had nowhere else to turn. They're wrong. Nothing in my life made me say, Oh God I can't live like this anymore. I can't do this, I'm going to kill myself. Help me! I've got to admit, my life was pretty awesome. When I woke up one morning and realized some studio had just paid me eighty times what my old man made a year to play Barney-freaking-Rubble, how could I not pinch myself and say, "Is this a great country or what!"

Don't get me wrong. There were things about who I was that I didn't like, and these things caused problems for me that I didn't want to face. I had a reputation as one of Hollywood's bad boys and living up to it led to behavior that was seriously questionable for a married man. But that didn't make me turn to Jesus. Overall, life was good. I just didn't realize it could be better.

Yeah, but you had it made, Stevie B. No argument here. I did have it made, at least according to the world system. You name it and I've been there, done that. Being a celebrity opened doors for me that were beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I've been on 250-foot yachts. I've hung out with billionaires and flown around on their private jets. I've been all over the world and experienced things 99.9 percent of people have never imagined in their wildest fantasies.

Of course a lot of guys assume I've done even more. They come up to me and ask, "Hey dude, by the way, in all those sex scenes in your movies, were you really doing it?" If they only knew what it takes to film those scenes they would understand how funny that question is. Movies are all about creating an illusion, and that is especially true of the sex scenes. But guys still want to know if I had sex with all the starlets I've worked with. The short answer is no, but I could have with a lot of them. The Hollywood life is a place that gives you license to do anything you want. Once you are in the club, celebrity gives you an all-access, no limits pass in the physical world. I could go wherever I wanted and do pretty much anything I wanted, and the hilarious part is that most of the time I didn't even have to pay for it.

But even as I let myself be swept along on this ride, something deep down inside me kept telling me none of this really made any sense. For me, celebrity was never reality. I thought, okay, I'll take the money and I'll have a good time while I do this acting thing. I wanted to see how far it would take me, but even as I did, I knew I didn't want to become part of the fabric of the Hollywood "reality." Deep down I was never completely comfortable in that world. Of course, that didn't stop me from diving pretty deep.

GROTTO A GO-GO

How far did I go? Deep enough to know which steps on the spiral staircase down into the wine cellar at the Playboy mansion would trigger the silent alarm. When you know that, baby, you're in pretty deep. I didn't learn this little secret until my third trip to the mansion. The fact that I made it there once was a really big deal. There are producers and a bunch of other studio execs that can't get in, so when I was invited there for the first time it was one of those moments in my celebrity life that made me say, "Hey baby, I've arrived. I'm legitimate because I'm going to the Playboy mansion."

As the youngest son of a social studies teacher, the mansion was awesome, not so much because of the decadence of the place but because of the mystery of it. Growing up I looked at enough Playboy magazines that I should be blind, so to be invited to the Mecca of the whole empire was unbelievable. The fact that I was a married man didn't keep me from going.

I remember walking into the Playboy mansion the first time and looking around and thinking to myself, "Wow, this place is crawling with sexy chicks," but I could feel something else deep down inside. I felt the presence of evil. Of course, most anyone in Hollywood would have responded to my little observation by saying, "Yeah, so? What's the problem? Enjoy it, man."

Keep in mind I wasn't anywhere close to becoming a Christian at the time. Yet even then I could sense the true nature of the place. The paganism that hangs in the air and the sexual exploitation of women gives the place an energy and power that is just pure evil. I don't know how else to describe it. That sense of evil should have made me turn tail and leave, but I didn't. Nor did it keep me from going back.

I learned the secret of the staircase on my third visit. I hadn't planned on going to the mansion, but the word got out that I was in town from my home in Tucson. Some people called and invited me to a party there, and I said, sure, why not. When I arrived I ran into Robert Downey, Jr. Now, in the old days, Downey really knew the mansion and he offered to give me a full tour. He wanted to make sure he showed me the grotto, which is this underground pool down in a cave. When you access the grotto you have to go down a long, very small, very narrow stone hallway. We were walking down this hallway and just as we came to the mouth that opened into the pool I saw some guy kind of stooped over what looked like a fuse box. I assumed it was a maintenance worker, but as I started to excuse myself and walk past him, he turned around and it was Hef himself. I was blown away. I was like, wow, it's the legendary Hugh Hefner in all his stereotypical glory: robe, slippers, pajamas, and pipe.

Hef turned around, and keep in mind it was pretty dark down there, and he said, "Good evening, gentlemen. Good to see you Robert. Stephen." Then he said, "Please forgive me, gentlemen, I was just adjusting the lights here in the grotto so that the mood is perfect. Enjoy yourselves." This blew me away. All I could think was, How weird is it that Hef himself adjusts the lights in the grotto. Talk about the personal touch. I mean, this guy was really into his whole deal. That set the tone for me that night.

After my tour I walked around the mansion doing my whole Hollywood routine. For me, hanging out at the Playboy mansion was part of the "fun" of being in the fast lane of celebrity and the Hollywood lifestyle that was completely acceptable. It was my rite of passage as Stephen Baldwin "THE TALENT." Of course I didn't tell my wife I was going to the Playboy mansion. If she had happened to ask I would have told her, but I didn't volunteer the information. To me, as long as I wasn't misbehaving I figured my being there was no big deal.

Later that evening Downey came up to me with this little grin on his face and he said, "Follow me." I asked where we were going and he just said, "Shhhh, I want to show you something." Now I know when I get to the end of this story you are not going to believe me, but folks, it's true.

Downey led me to what looked like a closet, but inside was a spiral staircase that went down about fifteen or twenty steps. We started down the staircase, and as we did, Downey stepped down the first two steps but skipped the third. I was coming down right behind him when he turned around and told me, "Don't step on that one." Then about halfway down he skipped another step and told me the same thing. Now, in retrospect, I don't know if he was just a kook and was joking around with me, but at the time he told me that these two steps would trigger the silent alarm.

When we got to the bottom of the staircase I found myself in a beautiful, vast wine cellar. Four playmates were already down there, hanging out and smoking pot. There was a time I would have joined in, but that's another chapter. At this point I had already been sober for years and I wasn't going to blow it. I immediately excused myself, thanked Robert for the good time, and got out of there.

I went back upstairs and stayed for maybe another ten minutes. There were a bunch of stars hanging out with the Playmates and everyone was drunk and high. Since I stopped drinking several years earlier, I felt disconnected from the whole scene. I glanced over at a couple of people whose names you would immediately recognize and they were all giggling and flirting with the Playmates. That's when it hit me. I looked around the room and said to myself, Wow, what am I doing here? If you think about it, all of this is pretty meaningless. This isn't working for me anymore. I thought there had to be more to life than this. And if there wasn't, I was really screwed. I had officially done it all, and still it left me with a question somewhere in the back of my mind that I couldn't answer. But more on that later.

BIRTH OF A DYNASTY

So how did I go from Stevie B, the youngest of six kids from a middle-class family in Massapequa, New York, to Stephen Baldwin, part of the most successful brother dynasty in Hollywood history and insider to the hidden mysteries of Hef's Playboy mansion? And how can I honestly say all I experienced through the journey wasn't enough? I'll get to that last question later because the answer lies in the story of my rise from small-town jock to playing Michael McManus in the double Oscar winning film, The Usual Suspects.

The story is pretty simple. My mom and dad met at Syracuse University and got married. They later moved to Long Island, New York, where my dad started teaching at Massapequa High School. Between 1955 and 1966 they had six kids, the last of whom was little ole me. I will go into much more detail about all this in the next chapter, but for now it is enough to say that who my siblings and I became was in large part due to how this school-teacher and his wife raised us. The genetics of our driven personalities pushed us to excel and the boldness of our character made us popular overachievers in athletics, art, academics and anything else we put our minds to. That's just how we were raised and that's how we Baldwins still are. Anything we do, we do full bore.

Then my big brother Alec decided to get into acting. After high school he started at George Washington University and majored in political science. Later he lost one of the largest student body elections in the history of George Washington University by a single vote. This made Alec reevaluate his future which led to him transferring to NYU and the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. While waiting tables at Studio 54 someone told him about an audition the next day for some movie. He tried out, but they told him he wasn't right for the role. However, the cast director told him about a role on a soap opera called The Doctors. Alec auditioned, landed the role, and did the show for a couple of years.

So what does all that have to do with me and the making of the Baldwin Brother Hollywood dynasty? On the show The Doctors, homeboy was making more in a month than daddy-o made in an entire school year as a teacher. So my dad gets this brilliant idea that the world does not need more doctors or lawyers, but actors. What a genius concept! Now Daniel, William, and little Stevie B sit down to dinner one night, and while we are sitting there my dad tells us how much Alec is making per soap opera episode. We react to this tidbit of information by projectile spewing our tuna casserole across the room. The three of us wipe the tuna from our chins, look at one another and say, If that schmuck can weasel his way into a situation like that, we might as well give it a try. This was the catalyst for the Baldwin brothers taking Hollywood by storm. True story. Or at least how I remember it.

After this, Daniel and Billy started playing around with acting. The two of them did some commercials, and auditioned for other parts. Before long the word started to get out about the Baldwin boys, especially as Alec started landing better and better parts. Billy went on to get into a very serious modeling career which led to bigger and better things, including major roles in movies like Backdraft.

My turn at the plate came after I graduated from Berner High School with a C average and not a lot of college options. Knowing no school in its right mind would let me in based on my scholastic potential, I figured I better try a different approach. I auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and got in. They didn't care about grades, which was a good thing for me because I didn't care about them either. But I knew I had talent. Of the four of us, I did the most community theater growing up. I also had success as an opera singer, which you will read more about later.

All of this helped me get into this very prestigious institution with very high standards for professionalism, standards I was eager to break in every way, shape and form I possibly could. It didn't take them long to come to the very intelligent deduction that perhaps inviting Stevie B to enter their institution wasn't the brightest decision they had ever made. This place was crawling with a bunch of artistic intellectuals and ballerinas, and if that ain't a candy store for a kid like me, I don't know what is.

Now don't get me wrong. I was anxious to pursue this drive inside me, this artistic desire. However, I would be lying if I said I didn't walk around that place with a little extra juice knowing I was Alec Baldwin's kid brother. I used this to my full advantage every chance I got. I even offered my own private acting lessons within the institution itself, and trust me, you can let your imagination run wild with that one.

Needless to say, my time at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts was pretty much one and done. They did not invite me back for a second year. So I left college and started pounding the pavement. I got a place in Manhattan, found an agent and a manager, and started going through the audition process. At the same time I met a drop-dead knockout Brazilian hotty on a New York bus, asked her out, and we've been together ever since. Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles after that is a complete idiot.

The Baldwin brother success in Hollywood, however, is not miraculous. The four of us simply figured out on a common-sense level what we would have to do to be successful in this business, and we did it. Obviously we possessed innate talent and ability, but we also had that drive to succeed. Everything just lined up for us and however many years later it is now, we're still doing it.

I landed my first professional acting job on the old sit-com, Kate and Allie. The part was a real stretch. I played a high school troublemaker who had one line, "So, is this an open book test?" Find the DVD. You'll see real genius at work. I had a few other bit parts on shows like Family Ties and did a few commercials.

My first serious role came in a feature film about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan called The Beast. William Mastrosimone wrote it and Kevin Reynolds from Waterworld was the director. I'd been out of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts maybe a year, slinging pizza on the Upper West Side while scratching for any small part I could find, and suddenly I'm off to Israel for three months to make my first movie. How weird is that? That job led to several more which finally led to my playing Buffalo Bill Cody in The Young Riders television show from 1989 to 1992.

The notoriety from the show, along with the Baldwin brother hype, catapulted me into full-bore celebrity status. Then, in 1995, I landed the role of Michael McManus in The Usual Suspects, written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. The film went on to win two Academy Awards along with high praise from all the critics.

Now when I tell the rest of this story most people think I am full of crap. Whatever. Don't believe me if you want, but it is true. The buzz and critical acclaim surrounding The Usual Suspects