David Caruso Finds His Way Back to the Crime Scene Years after leaving the NYPD, the red-haired actor finds a happy home in Miami.
by David Martindale about the author >>
Thanks, Rod Steiger. Thanks, Marlon Brando. If it weren't for those two acting greats, David Caruso might never have found inspiration to become an actor as well. "I was about 10 years old and I was in my father's apartment in the Village in New York," says Caruso, the former NYPD Blue star who currently is in his second season of C.S.I.: Miami. "I was in his study and my father said, 'Come in here. You need to see this.' He was on the couch in front of a black-and-white television watching On the Waterfront. There was this scene in the car with the two of them, Steiger and Brando, and he said, 'You need to watch this.'"
Caruso watched, even though he had no way of fully appreciating the significance of the scene, not only because he was awfully young for such grown-up material, but also because he saw the scene out of context. "But I remember looking over at my father and he was crying," Caruso says. "And I went, 'Wow, this is powerful!' To see your father cry and to connect it to a scene in a movie, I guess it had an effect on me."
Today, it's David Caruso who has a powerful effect on viewers. When he's on the screen, whether it's in decade-old NYPD Blue reruns or in cutting-edge new episodes of C.S.I.: Miami, it's next to impossible to pay attention to anyone around him.
Caruso's film and TV career dates back to the early '80s (with minor roles in such hits as An Officer and a Gentleman and First Blood), but he became an "overnight" star when NYPD Blue premiered in September 1993. As Det. John Kelly, a seen-it-all police veteran clinging to his compassion in a cynical, crime-infested world, he was
widely proclaimed as the hottest -- and the coolest -- new face on television.
Then Caruso came close to committing career suicide. In the second season of the controversial, pants-dropping drama, he bolted to become the leading man in such underwhelming feature films as Kiss of Death and Jade. His image took a beating as well. He was widely perceived as being ungrateful and somewhat deluded about his own star power. He even had the audacity to declare, "NYPD Blue will not be successful when I leave." To Caruso's credit, only after his departure did it become fully evident that Blue was actually an ensemble piece, not a one-man show. "I hear it every once in a while: someone who says they quit watching when the Kelly character left," Caruso says. "But that's rare. It seems like the audience for the show got even bigger."
Today, Caruso is the first to admit he was "immature, just immature" during those oft-turbulent NYPD Blue days. But he's quick to add that his fall from grace and his long journey back (which included a one-year run as the star of the legal drama Michael Hayes in 1997-98) has profoundly changed him. It transformed him into a better person, he says -- and, by extension, he has become a better actor, a performer for whom humanity and humility are now no longer just an act. "This process has been very good for me," he says. "So while we all understand that I mishandled the NYPD Blue situation quite handily, I've had a number of opportunities to grow up and realize what has been provided for me."
This time, now that Caruso is a hit again as Lt. Horatio Caine of the Miami-Dade crime lab, he has no intention of making another hasty farewell. "I could be very happy to do this show for a long time." And he very well might get that chance, because viewers evidently can't get enough of Vegas-based C.S.I., TV's top-rated show, or Caruso's Miami-based spinoff. "I think you may see even more than two C.S.I. shows (in the future)," Caruso speculates. "Because this concept works. And to just get to go for the ride on this concept, it's ideal for an actor."
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