Forrest Gump star Gary Sinise revealed his deeply personal reason for leaving Hollywood in a new interview with Fox News.
Sinise told the outlet that he left his career behind in 2019 because his family was “in the cancer fight during that time." Sinise has been married to Moira Harris since 1981. Together they share three children—daughters Sophie and Ella, and son McCanna Anthony "Mac” Sinise.
"Traveling away from the family wasn’t possible with what we were going through,” Sinise explained. “My wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer. My son was diagnosed with this very rare cancer, you know, within two months of each other,” he said.
Sinise’s son passed away in January after battling Chordoma, a rare form of cancer which he was diagnosed with in August 2018. Mac’s diagnosis came just two months after Harris was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“The cancer fight for Mac was especially difficult because he was…fighting this cancer with no cure,” Sinise said. “And trying to find drugs and doctors, and trying to find anybody who could do anything for him, was like a full-time job.” He added that Mac “became more and more disabled by the cancer as time went on, and he needed more and more care.” In addition to his wife and son’s respective cancer battles, Sinise’s father had “just had a stroke,” leaving him to care for his mother who was “alone” at the time. “I kind of had my hands full,” the actor admitted.
While Harris eventually went into remission and is currently cancer free, the family found it increasingly “difficult” to watch the disease consume Mac “until he finally just couldn't fight it anymore.” But Sinise said that his son “was happy at the end of his life,” having "achieved something that he had set out to do, which was to record all this music and make a full album out of it. “And that gave me a lot of joy just watching him kind of enjoy those moments.”
Sinise last appeared on-screen in 2020, opposite Mark Wahlberg in Joe Bell and in a supporting role on Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why. In addition to Forrest Gump (1994), he had high-profile roles in Apollo 13 (1993), Ransom (1995), and Snake Eyes (1998).
Per IMDb, Sinise may be mulling a return to the industry. He’s “rumored” to be attached to the WWII drama No Better Place to Die, though it appears the movie is still in the process of acquiring financing.
