Tom Berenger

Thomas Michael Moore (Chicago, Illinois, May 31, 1949), known as Tom Berenger, is an American actor and producer. The specialized press has highlighted his versatility for the roles he chooses, although he has sometimes been described as a "limited" actor. For a time, moreover, he gained a reputation for being considered a sex symbol of him. In the middle, he has not only worked as an interpreter, since he has also worked as a film and television producer and was a scriptwriter for the USA Network series Peacemakers , which aired in 2003.

His interest in the profession awoke during his stay at the University of Missouri, when he participated in a performance of the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and after graduating he began working in productions off-Broadway. Between 1975 and 1976, he played the role of Tim Siegel on the ABC series One Life to Live. Often compared to Paul Newman for his physical appearance, his film debut came in the 1977 horror film The Sentinel , in a minor role. He gained further notoriety working on films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's First Hits (1979) and Reunion (1983), which received three Oscar nominations, and his jump His definitive rise to fame came from the hand of Oliver Stone with Platoon (1986), where he played Sergeant Bob Barnes. For that work, he was awarded a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, both for best supporting actor.

After that, he played catcher Jake Taylor in Major League (1989) and its sequel, and sergeant Tom Beckett in the war movie Sniper (1993), whose success led to another seven deliveries. At the same time, he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his guest appearance on the NBC series Cheers and co-starred in the erotic thriller Sliver., which was harshly criticized and for which he was nominated for the Golden Raspberry. Between 1993 and 1997, he appeared in three landmark productions for TNT: Gettysburg , The Avenging Angel and Rough Riders . Starting in the 2000s, he began working mostly on TV movies and films distributed directly to video, with isolated appearances in the acclaimed Training Day (2001) and Inception. (2010). In addition, in 2012 he won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor – Miniseries or Made for TV Movie for playing the antagonist Jim Vance in the historical miniseries Hatfields & amp; McCoys.

Biography

Beginnings in acting

Thomas Michael Moore was born on May 31, 1949 in Chicago, into a Catholic family. He has a younger sister. His mother was a homemaker, and his father, who died in the mid-1970s, was a printer for the Chicago Sun Times until he left to work selling printing equipment, prompting Berenger to hire him. he saw little during his childhood. In his youth, he planned to join the Army, but gave up when he was in his junior year of high school. He is of Irish ancestry on his father's side; his great-grandfather was born there and moved to Chicago to work as a police officer. Berenger attended Rich East High School, graduating in 1967, and the University of Missouri, where he studied journalism, excelled in sports, and became interested in acting by participating in the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He graduated in 1971 and during that time lived in places such as Kansas City, Dallas and, for several months, Puerto Rico. In the mid-1970s, he settled in the New York borough of Queens to thrive as an actor, auditioning at the Public Theater opposite Joseph Papp, but was turned down because they thought he did not have the tough look they were looking for. His pseudonym, Tom Berenger, comes from a friend of his and he must have used it because there was already an actor with his name in the Equity syndicate. To support himself, in mid-1974 he worked at Eastern Airlines, LLC in a position that made little money. Other jobs he held were a 16mm film editor and hotel bellhop, before beginning his career by appearing in many television commercials and acting in off-Broadway plays. In 1975, while he was studying acting at the HB Studio, he landed the role of Tim Siegel in the long-running ABC series One Life to Live, where he spent a year and his character stood out for being part of the first Jewish family included in a program broadcast in the afternoon. His main objective was to gain experience and leave commercials, because he considered that his way of acting was too perfectionist for that medium. He also studied improvisation and fencing.

For that role, he was cast in the telefilm Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye (1977), centering on the political beginnings of John F. Kennedy, and that same year he starred in the film horror The Sentinel, in which he had a minor participation, although he recorded a relevant scene that was cut in the final copy. At the same time, he acted in End as a Man and Electra, with the Circle Repertory Company, The Rose Tattoo and National Anthem, with the Long Wharf Theatre, and A Streetcar Named Desire , a Milwaukee Repertory Theater production. Also, casting director Marion Dougherty couldn't cast him in Slap Shot because he looked so much like a young Paul Newman—who starred in that film—although it did land him a job on Looking for Mr. Goodbar, where Berenger performs a supporting role as Gary, a man unsure of his sexuality. In that film, which is based on Judith Rossner's novel of the same name, his character turns out to be a murderer; Berenger said she didn't like playing him because she found no humanity in him: "He's a disgusting character with no redeeming qualities. For me, it was like playing Charles Manson. I had nightmares after filming. I felt dirty." Film and theater book editor John A. Willis included him in his list of most promising actors of 1977, in the twenty-ninth volume of Theatre World.

Claim to fame

In 1978, he got his first leading role playing Richard Moore in Gary Youngman's Rush It. This was followed by the lead role in the Canadian film In Praise of Older Women, where he plays a Hungarian philosophy professor who has sexual encounters with various women older than him. For the actor, this work was burdensome as Bibi Andersson left the production mid-shoot, leaving little time for her scenes to be reshot, with Karen Black filling in for her. In her book I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, Roger Ebert opined that, in this character, "Berenger is a somewhat likeable boy, with a soft voice and a smile that he returns to time and time again", and found a problem in the development from it, because "he goes on and on having affairs with older women, and in the end he doesn't learn anything". The film's "general incompetence" didn't help disguise it. It was during this time, moreover, that he gained consideration as a sex symbol. In 1979, he played the train and bank robber Butch Cassidy in The first hits of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, prequel to the hit Butch Ca sidy and the Sundance Kid, released ten years earlier and starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Radio Times critic Alan Jones commented that while the film is not quite up to the standard of the original, "William Katt and Tom Berenger are very striking as these heroic young cowboys." For his part, Gary Arnold wrote in The Washington Post: “Though they bear some resemblance to Newman and Redford, these new actors are distinctive and skilled enough to stand out on their own. This movie isn't good enough to launch them into stardom, but Berenger and Katt work well together and their characters show nuances that we never see in the original film." Berenger did not receive many offers for the next two years and, due to money concerns, he was close to losing his home.

Also in 1979, he headlined the cast of the four-hour telefilm Flesh & Blood, based on a novel by Pete Hamill and produced by Paramount Television Studios. Berenger plays Bobby Fallon, a man who learns to box in prison and ends up competing for the heavyweight championship. For John J. O'Connor, of The New York Times, the actor is one of the positive points of the production and, similarly, Tom Shales, of The Washington Post, praised his performance, calling him "a cross between a young Brando and a serious Warren Beatty". The following year, he starred alongside Christopher Walken and Colin Blakely in John Irvin's The dogs of war, based on the novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth, in which he plays Drew Blakeley, the second in command of the mercenary Jamie Shannon —Walken's role. Because producer Norman Jewison wanted the length to be reduced to less than two hours, many of Berenger's scenes were omitted, which affected his character's background. Gary Arnold of The Washington Post liked his work, but Tom Hutchinson wrote in Radio Times that both Berenger and Blakely "apparently all they do is gesticulate a lot". He also shared credits with Marcello Mastroianni and Eleonora Giorgi in the Italian film Oltre la porta , by Liliana Cavani, in the role of an engineer involved in a dispute between his girlfriend and her father-in-law. Cavani, who found out when he saw him in Flesh & Blood on the recommendation of Miloš Forman, she chose him for his "innocent" appearance. The production received bad reviews, as did the cast; Octavi Martí of the Spanish newspaper El País said that "Berenger oscillates between Newman and cologne ads". homosexual His Other Love, directed by Arthur Hiller and released in 1982.

Berenger agreed to take part in the musical film Eddie and the Cruisers (1983), about the life and disappearance of a rock star, because the script seemed "magnificent" and saw the opportunity to play a character at different stages of his life —given the constant use of flashbacks-. For this job, he had to learn to play the keyboard on songs in the film, and although he mimed alone, he found it difficult due to his "lack of musical talent". Ron Sklar of the Daily Collegian, described the actor's performance as "exceptional". aired on HBO and eventually became a cult film. That same year, Berenger landed one of the leading roles in the Best Picture Oscar nominee Reunion, where he plays a television actor. Again, he played both a young and an adult character, although this time director Lawrence Kasdan made no use of flashback scenes. Immediately after completing the film, Berenger divorced his first wife and moved to Beaufort, South Carolina, the city where the film was shot, during a six-month depression. Paramount Pictures wanted to cast him in the drama film Firstborn but, because he was in a car accident, Peter Weller got the part. In 1984, he played Matt Rossi, a former boxer and club owner. strippers who suffer several murders by their dancers, in City of Crime, by Abel Ferrara. According to journalist Janet Maslin of The New York Times, Berenger is a "pretty boring hero" in this film.The following year, he played cowboy Rex O'Herlihan in Rustlers & # 39; Rhapsody , a parody film of the western genre that was harshly criticized, as were its characters, whom journalist Christopher John Farley called "two-dimensional" in his review for The Harvard Crimson .

Platoon and critical acclaim

In 1986, he starred in Platoon, an Oliver Stone film about an American platoon during the 1967 Vietnam War. Berenger plays the bloodthirsty First Sergeant Barnes, a character he later commented on: «I don't think Barnes has always been a psychopath, but it does seem to me that four years of service and everything else ended up turning him into that. I see him as a warrior who goes crazy. He just wants to take down the enemy and keep his teammates safe, and as Oliver [Stone] said, he's a soldier you want on your side, because he knows what to do." The director gave him the antagonistic role even though he didn't he was used to playing a character like that, and Willem Dafoe, who had played the villain on several occasions, played Elias, one of the heroes of the film. Thus, wrote Paul Attanasio in The Washington Post , “we see Barnes not as a cardboard Satan but for what he is: a man who is having a hard time. You can appreciate the good guy he used to be." Like his peers, Berenger had to undergo three weeks of training in the jungle to get into proper physical condition. Additionally, since he had to be painted with collodion to make the scars Barnes' facials and they had to peel off the product after the day of filming ended, his face was injured for a while. He also suffered injuries when his knife fell on his foot, according to what his co-star John said C. McGinley. From critics, her performance received praise; Candice Russel of the Sun-Sentinel said: "Berenger, who makes Barnes terrifying, manages to portray the shame of war and shows that, with determination, the weak can become the victor." For his work, he was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe, both for Best Supporting Actor, while the film won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Also, with a gross of $137,978,395, this was his highest-grossing film for the next twenty-four years.

The actor returned to television work after seven years when he played con artist Jeff Stevens in the three-episode CBS miniseries If Tomorrow Comes, based on the novel of the same name written by Sidney Sheldon and broadcast between March 16 and 18, 1986. The next film he starred in was Ridley Scott's thriller The Shadow of the Witness (1987), where he plays to police detective Mike Keegan, a married man who falls in love with his custodian—Mimi Rogers' character. Scott cast him noting how different Berenger's performances were in Reunion and Platoon, and "believed that his adaptability would make him capable of taking on the role of a cop." simple, attracted by a world that he does not know but, at the same time, fascinates him". This was the last "romantic" role he accepted, since since then he has focused on "[projects] a la Gene Hackman or Spencer Tracy. [...] I feel more comfortable and it's easier for me to work with men". mixed reviews; Rita Kempley, for example, criticized some aspects of the film in The Washington Post, although she commented positively on Berenger's acting and overall versatility. According to the Variety review >, the actor "knows how to carry this film and is extremely convincing". Critic Leonard Maltin argued that Berenger failed to "get off the ground in the industry" with this role because the film was "overshadowed" by Fatal Attraction , released that same year. In his next work, Shoot to Kill (1988) —distributed under the title Deadly Pursuit outside the United States—, both He and Sidney Poitier went through a tough shoot, because they did most of their stunt work. Berenger commented that the filming was "very physical", although he found the locations "just gorgeous". In the film, he plays Jonathan Knox, who must guide an FBI agent through a forest to find a murderer. Janet Maslin of The New York Times commented that the scenes shared by Poitier and Berenger are well crafted, adding that the latter, "satisfyingly surly [in this role], gets better with each performance". Shoot to Kill also has a 100% rating on review website Rotten Tomatoes, making it the highest-rated film Berenger has ever been involved in.

In the 1988 Costa-Gavras film Betrayed, he played Gary Simmons, a Vietnam veteran suspected of murder who, while initially kind and honest, turns out to be a white supremacist. In an interview that year, when asked about his character, he said: "I tried to understand him, but it wasn't easy. The most difficult thing was having to rationalize the whole thing: you had to play the racist. I did that or I turned the part down". The director mentioned that he found "a gold mine" with the actor, because "he has this aggressive look that is at the same time tremendously sweet, and he is able [to appear] extremely violent". According to journalist for the Canadian magazine Maclean's Brian D. Johnson, "Berenger makes the most of an impossible role". In his review for The Washington Post, Rita Kempley analyzed the character as follows: “You can't possibly like Gary, even though Berenger makes you feel like your pet gets rabies. It's a pity, he knew how to be a good dog, but he has to be put down. Unlike the icon of evil he played in Platoon, this character expresses a variety of emotions." However, that year he failed when he starred in Last Rites, at what Roger Ebert called "the worst movie of 1988." In this, Berenger plays the assistant priest of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, Michael Pace, who is familiar with many gangsters in the city and must protect a woman —the role of Daphne Zuniga— from her own sister, Zena, who is played by Anne Twomey. The actor said he was initially intimidated by this character because he had never played a priest, but he liked "playing the good guy for a change". for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and not much marketing work, resulted in the film being a box office flop. Narider Flora of Radio Times wrote: "If Tom Berenger's career If it were a roller coaster, this failed thriller would be one of the lowest points of it. [...] The script, the direction and the performances, all weak aspects, must have made you wonder how they convinced him to [do] this".

Morgan Creek Entertainment decided to bring together Berenger and Charlie Sheen, who had worked together on Platoon, to lead the cast of their next project: the comedy Major League (1989), although none stood out in that genre. The actor, who accepted the offer after a phone call with Sheen, plays catcher Jake Taylor, a former baseball star with leg problems. For a month, he prepared for the role with coach and former baseball player Steve Yeager, who "taught him enough to get by" and even substituted for him in some throwing scenes. By virtue of his strained relationship with director David S. Ward, who "treated him as if I didn't know anything", Berenger was close to abandoning filming. The film, in which his character is the captain of a mediocre team whose owner wants him to finish last in the league, was another success in his filmography. However, his romantic scenes with Rene Russo received poor reviews from both Variety and Chicago Sun-Times writer Richard Roeper. of Oliver Stone when making a cameo in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), which also deals with the Vietnam War and where he plays the marine who recruits Tom Cruise's character. The following year, he was the characteristically gruff-voiced private detective Harry Dobbs in Love at Large. Berenger met writer-director Alan Rudolph through his wife, who took the publicity photos for Major League , and when he read the script he found it "different from the rest, not boring at all. I thought it could be a lot of fun to do something like that. It's my kind of movie." For the role, he found inspiration watching the work of actors such as Humphrey Bogart and John Garfield and the characters Inspector Clouseau and Charlie Chan, and contacted an Atlanta private detective to learn ins and outs of the trade. performance, Rita Kempley commented, "Berenger's deadpan demeanor and strained voice—which sounds like a dump truck's mating call—make this a quirky and enjoyable performance." Also in 1990, he was in the Irish film The Meadow, based on John B. Keane's play of the same name, in which he plays the "American", an arrogant Irish-American who serves as a replacement for Englishman William Dee. His character is an Irishman who lived in the United States for many years and, once he returns to his native country, is treated as a foreigner, which offends him. Los Angeles Times critic Peter Rainer found the role unsuitable for Berenger, adding that he found the film "ridiculous and terribly over the top".

From the start of Sniper to the failure of Sliver

His next work, Wolfgang Petersen's thriller Shattered (1991), an adaptation of Richard Neely's novel The Plastic Nightmare, did not it convinced neither the public nor the press, since it was negatively criticized and was a box office flop, needing a budget of $22 million and only grossing half that amount. Berenger plays Dan Merrick, a businessman who is amnesiac due to a traffic accident and, once reformed, discovers bad aspects of his previous life. Chris Hicks, critic for the Deseret News, said he was convinced by the actor's work but did not know if the "somewhat boring" performance was intentional, due to the nature of the character. After that, Berenger moved on to starring in Héctor Babenco's film Playing in the Fields of the Lord, where he plays explorer Lewis Moon who, when his plane crashes in the middle of the Amazon jungle, becomes part of a tribe that inhabits that place. During filming, which lasted six months, Berenger and his partner Aidan Quinn were involved in a plane crash in the Amazon River. Because his character is a Native American, he had to use makeup to modify his skin tone, something which Candice Russell of the Sun-Sentinel found it "a ludicrous casting error." [...] It is not Berenger's fault that they make him wear reddish makeup, similar in color to Georgia mud, nor that his status as a movie star interferes with credibility." Rafael Navarro, who was very Critic in his review for Miami New Times, he also mentioned the costumes and makeup applied to him as negative aspects, and regarding the actor's performance, he said that he "was never seen so imposing and remote—or just as ridiculous—as in Playing in the Lord's Fields. [...] his performance represents everything that is wrong with this film: meticulousness used in blatant stupidity.” The film, meanwhile, did poorly at the box office.

In 1993, he starred in the Luis Llosa film Sniper, in which he plays Thomas Beckett, a marine hired to assassinate a Colombian drug trafficker and a Panamanian rebel leader. The Los Angeles Times critic Michael Wilmington noted the contrast between Berenger's character and that of his co-star, Billy Zane, but opined that the weak script prevented them from reaching their full acting expression. Although Malcolm Johnson of the Hartford Courant wrote that "[Sniper], it seems, is going to be another box office flop for Tom Berenger, who has a role as a marine veteran and assassin, a la John Wayne", the film spawned seven sequels. The actor continued working on war-themed films when he participated in Gettysburg (1993), which lasted more than four hours, since it was originally conceived as a miniseries. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, it follows the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War, with Berenger as Lieutenant General James Longstreet. Playing in the Lord's Fields, some critics were unable to take the production seriously due to circumstances beyond the control of the actors; in this case, it was due to the poor use of fake beards on the characters. Chris Hicks of the Deseret News commented, "Berenger's is unfortunate because of how stiff he looks, and his beard, apparently authentic, is almost comical: it looks like a beaver landed on his chin and died there." At the same time, he participated in the last two episodes of the NBC series Cheers, "The Guy Can't Help It" and "One for the Road"—which was divided into three parts—as Don the plumber, partner of Rebecca Howe (Kirstie Alley). Berenger received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Best Guest Actor – Comedy Series, which was won by David Clennon.

He also starred, along with William Baldwin and Sharon Stone, who had starred in Basic Instinct a year earlier, in the erotic thriller Sliver, where he plays a novelist named Jack. Initially, the production company Paramount did not want to hire him because he had not worked on a successful production in years and had a drinking problem, particularly vodka. Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, who had become friends with Berenger during the filming of Betrayed, approached production manager Brandon Tartikoff and asked him to hire Berenger "as a favor", which he got. The film suffered several setbacks during production, as Paramount demanded that a new ending be filmed and several scenes redone, straining the relationship between Berenger and director Phillip Noyce. The actor explained this as follows: "He required more and more time from me, until I said: 'No, no, you have five days to film whatever you have to film.' If we had done it as he planned, it would have taken us a year. Berenger, as a result of the latter, refused to take a publicity photograph of a sadomasochistic nature with the actress Polly Walker, which ended up being done using doubles, and he abandoned the shoot. About the actor's performance, Augusto Martínez Torres wrote in El País: "The always somewhat leaden Tom Berenger manages to convey very little life to his impulsive writer of detective novels, both because of him and because of a script that doesn't give him many opportunities." Roger Hurlburt he was even more critical in his review for the Sun-Sentinel: “Berenger playing the writer is the worst thing in the movie. He's not comfortable playing a potential villain, and it shows." This role earned him a Golden Raspberry Award nomination in the Worst Supporting Actor category. Despite criticism, grossing $116,280,867, Sliver became the highest-grossing film he had been in since Platoon.

In 1994, the sequel to Major League was made, featuring most of the original cast and receiving poor reviews, scoring 5% on Rotten Tomatoes and being reviewed by Tampa Bay Times mentioning that "the irregular pacing loses much of the charm of the first film". In his next work, the comedy Chasers (1994, Dennis Hopper), plays Marine Petty Officer Rock Reilly who, along with a partner, escorts a prisoner marine—Erika Eleniak's character—on a trip to Charleston. On this occasion, he used a tone of voice "as deep as George C. Scott's General Patton" which to The Washington Post journalist Rita Kempley sounds "as if Berenger had been gargling with cat litter". The film grossed just over $1 million and, like his previous works, generated a negative response from the specialized press. The following year, the actor starred in another box office flop: the contemporary western from Tab Murphy's Last of the Dogmen, which cost $25 million to make and only replaced $7 million of that coin. Berenger plays a bounty hunter who believes he has tracked down an unknown Cheyenne tribe. In his review for the Tampa Bay Times, Steve Persall was highly critical of Berenger, commenting that "an actor that limited can't do much with the "hero" that Murphy devised for him", calling the character uncharismatic. In the same year, he starred in two made-for-television movies: the erotic thriller Body Language, where he plays a mafia lawyer who falls in love with a stripper —Nancy Travis's character—, and the western The Avenging Angel, of which he was also a producer. In it, he was Danite Miles Utley, a man who throughout his life prepared to defend The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Berenger's daughters, Chloe and Chelsea, starred in this production. The Avenging Angel garnered more attention than usual for a TV movie because it featured Berenger and Charlton Heston in the cast and received encouraging reviews, although, as with Gettysburg years before, the false beards were mentioned as one of the "disappointments" of the production. The actor's work was also well received.

Professional decline

In 1996, he starred in The Substitute, where he plays a mercenary posing as a substitute teacher at a gang-ridden high school. Critic Roger Ebert said that this is a cliché action film, but commented positively on the scenes between the actor and Diane Venora. William Thomas of Empire agreed with Ebert, writing that "the film consists entirely of things that have already been seen, [...although] this one is sub-par" and said that "Berenger, sporting a scarred face, as usual for him, is not capable of conveying anything." The actor was not involved in the sequels, where his character was replaced, due to issues related to his pay. At the same time, he starred as ex-cop and novelist Ernie DeWalt in An Occasional Hell, a film based on a novel by Randall Silvis that first aired on HBO and was later distributed direct-to-video. The President: The 1997 TNT Miniseries Rough Riders He got into it after finishing Gettysburg and enlisted the help of producer William J. MacDonald, whom he met while working on Sliver . In addition to playing Roosevelt, he was an executive producer. The miniseries, which covers the Battle of the San Juan Hills, was a huge success during its broadcast, watched by some thirty-four million people. In his review for the Tampa Bay Times, Robert Bianco noted that the second episode is better than the first and that the same is true of Berenger's performance. In 1998, he played a supporting role in The Gingerbread Man, based on a story by John Grisham, and co-starred with Melanie Griffith in the legal thriller Shadow of Doubt, which received poor reviews, as did his work. In this regard, Keith Bailey stated that "the fact that the lesser-calibre musician Huey Lewis hangs out longer and performs better than leading man Tom Berenger is just one of the many oddities of this forced courtroom drama." His last role in 1998 was that of Clifford Dubose in the thriller A Murder of Crows, in which he starred with Cuba Gooding Jr.

Berenger at the 2013 Monte Carlo Television Festival

In 1999, he played military man John Riley in One Man's Hero, which focuses on the Irish members of the San Patricio Battalion who fought for Mexico in the US intervention in that country between 1846 and 1848, and for which he had to practice movements with a musket and bayonet. Despite good reviews, the film, which Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer took over when it bought Orion Classics, did poorly in theaters. the box office, given that it had little promotional and distribution work. Berenger also played CIA agent Kevin Jefferson, who is forced to come out of retirement to rescue a colleague, in In the company of spies, which had great support from said agency and received mixed reviews. Later, he participated in the direct-to-video film Diplomatic Siege (1999), where he plays General Buck Swain, which deals with terrorists who take hostages at a US embassy in Bu carest. According to the Radio Times review, this time the actor "goes on screen to collect his salary and little else". His next work, Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying, from that same year, did not receive good reviews. After participating in an episode of the NBC series Law & Order broadcast on February 16, 2000, he starred with Stephen Baldwin in the skydiving telefilm Cutaway. Lastly, that year he starred in Trackdown, sequel of Hackers (1995) which was released on video in the United States almost five years later for various reasons, among them the demands of Kevin Mitnick —on whom the film is based— and the writer Jonathan Littman towards the producers.

Berenger had a minor role in Antoine Fuqua's Training Day (2001), which received two Academy Award nominations. Sign, where he shared the cast with Burt Reynolds and Rod Steiger, and starred in the crime film True Blue. On December 10 of that year, he guest-starred in an episode of the FOX series Ally McBeal. —, directed by George Mihalka. In 2002, he starred in the western genre telefilm Johnson Country War, an adaptation of Frederick Manfred's novel Riders of Judgment, which deals with the Johnson County War. At the same time, he worked on the thriller starring Sylvester Stallone D-Tox, which received poor reviews and was commercially a hit. resounding failure o. Berenger led the cast of The Junction Boys, which is based on a book by Jim Dent and premiered on ESPN on December 14, 2002. In it, he plays the football coach American Bear Bryant during his first year in charge of the Texas A&M Aggies, in 1954. Having to study his character and shoot the film in a very short time, the actor said he felt "back in his years in the College, trying to cram a semester into one night." According to what Ed Sherman wrote in Star-News, Berenger did a good job of "capturing this coach's legendary grunts"., reprized the role of Thomas Beckett in the telefilm Sniper 2 in which, according to critic Scott Weinberg, he did a passable job. To ensure that the military aspects of the film were correct, Berenger hired a gunnery sergeant as a technical adviser.

Focus on TV

In 2003, he guest-starred in four episodes of the NBC drama series Third Watch, playing journalist Aaron Noble. That year, he starred in the American western-themed series Network Peacemakers, in which he plays Sheriff Jared Stone, who uses forensic methods to solve crimes. This role, according to Martin Sieff, served to "revive [his] career for him. [...] One feels that [Berenger] finally found his center of gravity with this character ». Sieff added, in his review for United Press International, that the production was "the surprise hit of that summer and of that TV season". Linda Stasi of the New York Post also praised the work. of the actor, but said that "although I would watch Berenger even make his bed, this script is difficult for even a fan of the actor to process." Peacemakers ran for nine episodes and was canceled due to low ratings. During this time, he signed on to be a part of the drama Capital City, a Rod Lurie pilot that was originally going to premiere on ABC in the 2002-2003 season. However, the project was not carried out, although years later it was developed again but this time for The CW. In 2004, Sniper 3 was released directly for video, in which his character goes undercover in Vietnam to assassinate a drug dealer and terrorist. Like what happened in the previous installment, Berenger had to intervene so that some details of the film, such as the costumes of the characters, were correct. As he explained, this ended up discouraging him: "At one point, I told them [to the production]: & # 34; Damn cheapskates, why don't you get an expert? I don't have to hire anyone". [...] I can't fake this kind of shit. You know, the medals I wear in the film are not the ones I should be wearing, the same thing happens with the patches, with the unit... All eyes go to those kinds of details, [...] and we lose credibility." Sniper 3 received unfavorable reviews, such as Sloan Freer, who gave it 2/5 stars in his review for Radio Times, or Jeffrey Robinson, who said that Thomas Beckett "is not well developed" in this installment.

After that, the screenwriter William Mastrosimone contacted him to assume the role of the soldier and pastor John M. Chivington in the TNT and DreamWorks miniseries Into the West, an offer that Berenger, knowledgeable about Chivington's life and fond of his country's history, he accepted. Produced by Steven Spielberg and first broadcast on June 10, 2005, the series had a budget of US$50 million—plus another US$50 million used for marketing—and covers various historical events, such as the Civil War and the gold rush. Into the West was well received by both the public and the specialized press.

Public Image

Berenger at the Naval Air Station Key West, during 2018 Thanksgiving

During the 1980s and 1990s, he played roles in many suspenseful films with erotic overtones, which film theory professor Linda Ruth Williams says helped shape his career. For his work in films The Romantics garnered good reviews and, according to what David Lida wrote for Elle in 1989, "His good looks, muscular build, and good-natured good looks have earned him an increasing reputation as a one of Hollywood's most sought-after leading men". Earlier, in the 1970s, he had achieved such an image on television, as "sort of a heartthrob" on One Life to Live. Likewise, he is recognized for his participation in war films and, in 2017, he was awarded for his career when he received the GI Choice Award, given by the GI Film Festival, focused on this type of genre. Berenger dealt with the Vietnam War by acting in two films: Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, both by Oliver Stone. In March 1990, after the latter's release, he said that he was no longer interested in participating in projects about that conflict because he had "got fed up and tired" and would instead prefer historical films. with his fondness for history, which he has had since he was a child and which his father encouraged. In the year 2000 he received, along with Robert Stack, Melissa Gilbert, L.Q. Jones, Donna Hall and Howard W. Koch, a Golden Boot Award for his performances in multiple westerns.

Berenger is an actor who has played a variety of characters, leading journalist Rita Kempley to say that "like Robert De Niro, he looks different in every movie he makes". his characters to "build" them and often plays them with different accents: from Queens in The Shadow of the Witness, southern in Platoon, from the Northwest in Shoot to Kill and the Midwest in Betrayed. He does not usually focus on commercial projects, so his filmography includes few box office hits. Despite his career, he never sought to become a movie star. cinema and, therefore, has not received much attention from the media. As explained by his director in Love at Large Alan Rudolph, “he doesn't like to promote himself. So, you won't see him in fashion magazines posing with hot clothes. He doesn't play that game.” Regarding his lack of interest in participating in big productions, in August 2000 journalist Scott S. Smith wrote the following:

This modest movie star is not interested in re-approaching the attention of the crazy Oscar world. Instead, it has gone slowly, film after film, trying to choose roles that will allow you to grow as an actor, regardless of the box office prospects.

Private life

Berenger met teacher and publicist Barbara Wilson in the late 1960s on a beach in Indiana Dunes National Park, and began a relationship with her for a few months. They separated due to the distance between Chicago and Gary, Indiana, where Wilson lived. However, three years later they met again in Chicago, began an intermittent courtship and were married on February 24, 1974. The wedding, which had only about fifteen guests, took place at the Church Center for the United Nations —Berenger he is Catholic and she is a Protestant—, while the reception was in Chicago. They have two children, Allison and Patrick, they divorced and he remarried, once the filming of Reencuentro (1983), with real estate agent Lisa Williams, in Beaufort, South Carolina, where they moved. Berenger has three daughters with her: Chelsea, Chloe, and Shiloh, and by 1997 was divorcing and was "battling "so that their daughters would not be raised under Scientology, a church that according to the actor had "brainwashed" Williams. She, for her part, maintained that they separated because of a relationship between Berenger and makeup artist Patricia Alvaran. The divorce was finalized in November of that year. Between 1998 and 2011, he was married to Alvaran, with whom he has a daughter. He has commented that he does not feel identified with any of the main political parties in the United States and that he would prefer it to exist. "a third major political party" in that country. In 1988, he donated $10,000 to the art department at the University of Missouri as part of the Tom Berenger Acting Scholarship Fund, an annual award for senior drama students.

Filmography

Cinema

Television

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards

Golden Globe

Primetime Emmy