EW專訪全文轉載：
http://www.ew.com
（因為EW網站需雜誌訂戶方能瀏覽，故全文轉載。至於中文翻譯，就別指望我了，因為讀了就讓人難過，實在不想再將其化為文字啊！）
Ken Wahl Comes Tumbling Down
Why the ’’sexiest man on TV’’ went into hiding. The ’’Wiseguy’’ star recounts the ups and downs of his last eight reclusive years by Dalton Ross
The ’’sexiest man on TV’’ rests in the back booth of a Los Angeles bar. He’s sitting with a vodka in one hand and holding his aching neck with the other. Somewhere behind the bushy goatee, disheveled black and gray hair, and many layers of extra weight hides Ken Wahl. The other patrons are oblivious to the presence of a man whose résumé includes movies with Paul Newman and Brad Pitt, a critically hailed TV show (’’Wiseguy’’), as well as a Golden Globe win and Emmy nod for best actor. At one time, Wahl, with his chiseled chin and picture-perfect pompadour, was hailed as the hottest hunk since Tom Cruise. Us magazine put him on its cover in April of ’89, proclaiming him TV’s stud-muffin du jour. All the guys wanted to share a beer with him, and all the gals wanted to share a bed with him.
But Ken Wahl’s story didn’t follow the expected script. His story involves alcohol, accidents, arrests, a cover-up, Elvis, both Barbi twins, and most of all, a boatload of physical and emotional distress. During his first in-person interview in more than eight years, Wahl squirms constantly in his seat. He’s obviously uncomfortable. Sure, there’s the physical pain. But he also loathes opening up -- a fact he’ll repeat in his deep, direct voice many times over the next two hours. Wahl refused to be photographed, and says he’s doing this interview only as a favor to a publicist friend, who encouraged him to promote three available ’’Wiseguy’’ DVD sets. After all, what’s in it for him? And what could possibly be so interesting about his life?
The mystery surrounding Wahl goes all the way back to the beginning. Ken Wahl was born in Chicago on... well, no one quite knows when Wahl was born. Some reports say Halloween 1954, others say Valentine’s Day 1956, but these reports seem to be attempts by the actor to stymie curiosity seekers. ’’There’s a reason for that,’’ Wahl states cryptically, ’’but I’m not gonna get into why.’’ Oh, one other thing: Ken Wahl is not actually Ken Wahl. At least he wasn’t when he was born. While he declines to disclose his birth name, he does say that the moniker he’s gone by for the past 25 years is the name of the person who saved his father’s life in the Korean War.
Growing up, Wahl dreamed of becoming a baseball player. With an athletic frame that would grow to 6 foot 3, he was a power-hitting shortstop in the Cal Ripken Jr. mold. ’’I don’t know if I would have made the major leagues,’’ Wahl says, ’’but I would have gotten to at least Triple-A.’’ That was before the 15-year-old crashed a motorcycle during a little off-roading. The result -- a busted left knee -- ended Wahl’s field of dreams. It was also a nasty case of foreshadowing.
Soon after, Wahl quit high school ’’to help pay the bills,’’ and crossed the country while working as a janitor, construction worker, and gas jockey. Acting seemed like an improbable next step, especially since Wahl was fairly disdainful of the craft. ’’To me it always seemed like a waste of time to sit there for two hours in the dark watching other people do things,’’ he says. ’’Even in school, acting just seemed so queer, you know -- wearing makeup and putting on costumes.’’ But acting, though not cool to Wahl, came easily. He made his way to Hollywood and worked as an extra on films like ’’The Buddy Holly Story’’ for $25 a day and lunch, before landing the lead role of Richie in the goofy 1979 gang drama ’’The Wanderers.’’ Two years later, he starred alongside Newman in ’’Fort Apache, the Bronx,’’ something that might have awed the young actor if he had bothered to see ’’The Hustler’’ or any of Newman’s well-known work.
Wahl began popping up in a number of movies and magazine articles. (Of his well-reported feud with Bette Midler on the set of ’’Jinxed’’ he says, ’’I said some things off the cuff that got repeated and repeated and got blown way out of proportion.’’) In 1984, his career was interrupted by another accident when he was thrown from a motorcycle on his way to a meeting with Diane Keaton about starring in the romantic drama ’’Mrs. Soffel.’’ A helmetless Wahl ended up with ’’a pretty wicked gash in my scalp’’ that was closed with 89 stitches. To add insult to literal injury, the part went to Mel Gibson.
Three years later, and without a big hit on his film résumé (’’Every single movie I’ve done has been crap because they’ve cut the best stuff out’’), the 32 (or perhaps 31?)-year-old turned his attention to a pilot for a Stephen J. Cannell drama called ’’Wiseguy.’’ The lead role of undercover agent Vinnie Terranova called for an introspective investigator with street smarts. ’’He had all the elements,’’ says Cannell. ’’He was vulnerable, likable, handsome, dark, and he could play intricate emotional scenes.’’ With multi-episode story arcs -- then a TV anomaly -- ’’Wiseguy’’ became an instant critical fave.
The moment everything soured, Wahl says, is easy to pinpoint. It occurred during season 2 of ’’Wiseguy’’ when director Jan Eliasberg decided to do a tracking shot from Vinnie’s point of view. ’’She had me walking into my own POV shot, and you don’t have to be Steven Spielberg to know that that’s not right,’’ says Wahl. ’’I was stepping up, and the [camera] wheel caught my right heel and it just ripped out the Achilles tendon. Pop! It sounded like a champagne cork. But she wanted to do it again, so I said, ’Okay, you’re the boss.’’’
’’So we did the shot again,’’ Cannell sighs, ’’and ran him down again! Twice!’’ (’’I would never ask an actor or a stuntperson to do anything that was unsafe,’’ replies Eliasberg, who adds that Cannell and others hired her afterward to direct various projects.) At this point, Wahl was in such pain, Cannell decided to replace him for three episodes while he healed. ’’And that was the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning,’’ says Wahl. ’’From that day forward, I’ve never been the same.’’
