by Steve Ryfle
For Peter Fonda, being a son of Hollywood royalty wasn't easy. For one thing, he couldn't escape the comparisons; every time Peter went on an audition, it seemed, they wondered why he didn't possess the same natural skill as his dad, the great Henry Fonda. Then there were the other actors and directors who resented him, assuming his surname had given Peter an unfair advantage.
And his relationship with his dad was hardly picture-perfect. Henry Fonda was far better at acting than he was at being a family man (he married five times), and when Peter became famous in his own right, as a drug-taking, chopper-riding delinquent-cum-counter-culture symbol in "Easy Rider," his father was none too pleased. "I dig my father," Peter once said. "I wish he could open his eyes and dig me."
Through the decades, Hollywood has produced a fair share of father-son sagas, many of them dramatic both onscreen and off.
Maybe it's not exactly a dynasty, but the Douglas clan has been dominating the box office for six decades. Kirk Douglas was one of the biggest stars of the fifties and sixties ("The Bad and the Beautiful," "Spartacus"), and his son Michael is both a bankable mega-star and a respected producer. They get along well now, but things weren't always so rosy between the patriarch and the prodigy.
Michael Douglas's parents divorced when he was six and he only saw his dad on weekends. As a teen, he asked Kirk to help him break into the biz, but dad was adamantly opposed, believing that the acting life and all its uncertainty was no good for his spawn (which also included sons Joel, Peter, and the late Eric, all of whom made their careers in the biz). Michael proved himself, not just to his peers, but to his dad, who eventually embraced his son's accomplishments (which, to be fair, pretty much eclipsed Kirk's career long ago). "If I'd known what a big shot Michael was going to be, I would have been nicer to him when he was a kid," Kirk once said.
When "24" star Kiefer Sutherland was just two years old, "He ran in circles and hit his head against the wall," said his father, actor Donald Sutherland. "I told him to stop, but he said he was just trying to make me laugh." Turns out Kiefer may have been banging his head against the wall out of frustration, unable to connect with the dreaded Emotionally Distant Father. Another product of divorce, Kiefer lived with his mom, actress and social activist Shirley Douglas (who was once investigated for trying to buy guns for the Black Panthers). After Kiefer's acting career began taking shape in the 1980's, father and son reconnected and even appeared together in "Max Dugan Returns" and "A Few Good Men."
But not every Hollywood star wants his boy to grow up and get a real job. When they were just kids, Jeff Bridges and his older brother Beau were tutored by their dad, the late Lloyd Bridges, who cast them on his hit TV series "Sea Hunt." And at home, Lloyd taught them how to "stage fight," and one of their favorite boyhood pranks was to start a fake brawl in public, attract a big crowd of spectators, then bail just before police arrived.
Like Michael Douglas, Jeff Bridges surpassed his father's career arc by leaps and bounds; unlike Douglas, Bridges says his father was always a big supporter of his acting ambitions. "He encouraged his kids to go into show business, he loved it so much," Jeff says. "He taught me all the basics: how you always play a scene like it was the first time, how to let what the other actor is saying form your response, how to be part of scene and live it. All of it came from him."
Perhaps no clan of actors has more stories to tell than the family of "West Wing" star/political lightning rod Martin Sheen. The actor's eldest son, Emilio Estevez, was a signature member of the Brat Pack, and went on to a respectable career as both actor ("Men at Work," "Mighty Ducks") and indie director. Emilio got some play in the tabs a decade or so ago when he married Paula Abdul, but nothing can compare to his little brother Charlie Sheen's two decades of booze-soaked, rehab-studded, porn star and prostitute-loving shenanigans.
Martin Sheen has supported his kids (another son, Ramon, and daughter Renee, are also actors) in their thespian endeavors, and always tried to keep them grounded (which, in Charlie's case, probably wasn't easy). Says Emilio: "The most significant thing my father has taught me is that my job is no more or less important than someone else's. When I realize there are a billion people in China who don't know I exist, any flightiness is swept away."
That's just a sampling of the father-son acting tandems that have given nepotism a good name, dating all the way back to silent film star Douglas Fairbanks and his son, Douglas Jr. There's also Ben Stiller and his pop Jerry ("Seinfeld's" Frank Costanza), and "War of the Worlds" actor Jake Busey and his doppelganger dad Gary. And there's bound to be a new generation of sons to pick up where their fathers leave off, led by the likes of Lil' Romeo, heir apparent to the multi-platform artist (rapper-producer-director-actor-screenwriter) Master P.
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