Q&A with David Caruso - Radio Times, June 2004

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Q&A with David Caruso - Radio Times, June 2004

The CSI: Miami star shared the secrets of his success with Michael Park.

MP: I've heard that it was watching The Godfather that made you want to become an actor. Is that because you wanted to be a gangster really?

DC: Not after an event one night in New York. Four of us were sitting in a bar and a guy came in and asked if we wanted to make $1,500, and he explained the situation. They were about to go and rob a supermarket and they needed lookouts. Two of the guys I was with went and shortly thereafter got killed.

That must have been a heavy dose of reality. So how did you become an actor?

I faked a résumé and falsified all sorts of theatre credits, but I knew I could go into an audition and back it up.

On the big screen you've played bad guys, and on television you've played good guys and been more successful. Do you think you simply make a better good guy?

In Hollywood you end up serving a particular function, and mine seems to be as a good guy. It's what people, myself included, are comfortable with; it's how they seem to want to see me.

You famously left NYPD Blue at the beginning of series two and the press reported you wanted too much money and behaved really badly. Do you regret your actions at that time?

The essence of what happened then was I wasn't prepared for all the attention and competing demands on my time. So much stuff started happening for me so quickly - like motion-picture offers and so on - that it complicated my life. But I didn't understand my responsibilities in terms of how I should behave. I was just inexperienced.

When you began filming CSI: Miami, did you think it would be as successful as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation?

I don't want to say it was a slam dunk, but when you're working for this group, they know what they're doing.

What are your plans for when you've finished filming this series?

I have a project that I may be able to do that I co-wrote, about a guy in a gambling blackout, and there's a sort of association with my drinking period. I have a theory about Rip Van Winkle - that he was an alcoholic. If you think about it, he was a guy who slept for 20 years and then woke up, so the project is sort of about that idea.

One final question: you've played some memorable parts, so how do you explain the 2000 film Swirlee, where you played the roommate of an ice-cream cone?

Oh, that's great; you should see it. It's a great piece - a 20-minute short film I made with a buddy of mine. He plays a prosthetic version of a Mr Softee ice-cream cone, like a character from the film Dick Tracy, and I'm his roommate and we play it straight. It's a cool piece; really good.

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Read our David Caruso interview - or take a look at our full CSI: Miami guide.