As a boy, Bruce Boxleitner couldn’t wait for the next John Wayne western or science fiction creature feature to come to his local drive-in. So it was perhaps destiny that two of his greatest successes took him back to the old west on How the West Was Won and into space on Babylon 5. Bruce, who turned 75 on May 12, is also contemplating a real-life journey to the stars. “Just the other day I spoke with Bill Shatner about him having gone up in space [in 2021 at age 90] aboard the Blue Origin rocket,” Bruce exclusively tells Closer. “He inspired me so much. I just have to find out how to do it.”
In the immediate future, the actor, who recurs on the INSP network series Blue Ridge, is looking forward to a long-overdue reunion with his Scarecrow and Mrs. King costar Kate Jackson at The Hollywood Show in Burbank, California, from June 6-7. “I haven’t seen Katie physically since 1987 and I can’t wait!” he says. “It’s going to get a little emotional.”
What was your childhood like in Illinois?
“I grew up in a town called Crystal Lake, like the camp in the Friday the 13th horror movies. We lived by the cornfields in a little box house that was part of post-WWII G.I. housing. My grandparents’ dairy farm was not quite an hour away, so I was raised around farm animals. And I literally had a collie dog named Lassie.”
When did you get the acting bug?
“When we got a TV, I remember Davy Crockett and Zorro were my first TV heroes. I got a kitchen knife and carved a Z in our door like Zorro did. My mother and father freaked out. But it wasn’t until high school that I drifted toward the drama guild.”
Did you go to the movies a lot as a kid?
“Oh yes. I’d go to the drive-in to see a John Wayne or Elvis movie with my teenage aunt and her boyfriend — much to his chagrin. And then when I was 16, I worked in a little family-run movie theater in Mount Prospect, Illinois.”
What do you consider your big break?
“I would say getting the role of Luke Macahan in How the West Was Won because that put me in an epic Western opposite James Arness, who had been in front of Americans for 20 years on Gunsmoke. I’d been in one of the very last [episodes] of Gunsmoke and then James hand-picked me and gave me my career.”
Bruce Boxleitner
A lot of people also remember you from your starring role in Scarecrow and Mrs. King with Kate Jackson.
“That was after I did [1982’s sci-fi film] Tron and realized I wasn’t going to be a movie star, so I headed back to TV where I felt comfortable.”
What are your favorite memories with Kate?
“We shot in Europe in the summer of 1984 when the Olympics had taken over the streets of L.A. I remember Katie and I standing on the top of one of the Alps staring at seven different countries when a blizzard hit us from out of nowhere. I also remember racing down the autobahn to Munich with Katie and some of the other cast doing about 200 miles an hour to get to a Neil Diamond concert.”
Were you sorry to see the show end after four seasons?
“I had some of the best times and some of the toughest times. [Kate and I] had our little spats, but nothing like Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis on Moonlighting. At the end of the day, I knew I was No. 2 on the call sheet. Unfortunately, Kate had been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was so taboo back then that they didn’t even tell us. That’s when they decided to pull the plug after the fourth season. We were still doing well and I think we could have gone another two seasons.”
Are you excited to see Kate at The Hollywood Show in June?
“I’m praying she shows. She’s very skittish about this. She’s had incidents involving the craziness surrounding Charlie’s Angels. But a couple of years ago some Scarecrow and Mrs. King fans went out to the Burbank house that we used for Amanda King’s house and Kate surprised them and signed autographs. I think dipping her toe in that way made her feel comfortable and made her realize that the fans have nothing but love for her.”
Ironically, you also worked with Charlie’s Angels’ Jaclyn Smith in 1999’s Free Fall. Did you have fun together?
“Every morning in makeup Jaclyn would say, ‘Well I talked to you-know-who again last night. We talk about you all the time.” I knew she was talking about Kate but she’d just keep teasing me, saying, “I never knew certain things about you, but I do now. You were a naughty boy.’”
You married your wife, Verena, in 2016. How did you meet?
“I’d gone through my second divorce which was tough and ripped my guts out, so I was done with marriage. Famous last words. Verena had worked as a Las Vegas publicist for 18 years. We met at a convention on the Queen Mary and she totally floored me. We got married in Oahu at sunset with a full Hawaiian ceremony on a secret lagoon. She’s now finishing up an internship program to become a registered dietician.”
Have any of your three sons followed you into performing?
“I have Sam and Lee with my first wife, Kathryn, and Michael with Melissa Gilbert, and all three are in the business — writing, directing or acting. Mikey is named after Michael Landon and just made his off-Broadway debut last year. Verena and I flew in for his opening night and hooked up with Melissa and her husband, Timothy Busfield. Damn, I was so proud of Mikey. It’s not easy being “‘the kids of…’”
What do you like about being the age you are now?
“I’m totally enjoying my life now. I don’t have the pressure I had when I was younger to aggressively pursue my career. That can sometimes be a detriment to the family. Verena’s keeping me young. She says I’m going to live to at least 125.”