Gary Sinise on Faith, Family and Giving Back: ‘Service Is a Great Healer’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Gary Sinise is recalling his path to faith and “service,” and how the church stepped in during a critical time in America.
“[Our faith] helped us through a lot of difficult moments,” Sinise said of his family. “Before I was actually confirmed into the church, myself…My wife had been confirmed into the church. She…went through a difficult alcohol period and that got very dark and very scary and everything like that.”
“When she came out of that, thankfully, on the other side — and she’s been sober for 27 years now — she, you know, her mother had been raised Catholic, and she kind of felt this calling to go back to the Catholic church,” he said on The Sage Steele Show on Feb. 20. “Because she did, we started going to the Catholic church, and I would go, and our kids started going to Catholic school and all of that. I became a Catholic in 2010…She was a full 10 years before that.”
Sinise recalled how the church stepped up during the 9/11 attack.
“The church was so helpful during the September 11th period. I remember just it being a sanctuary of peace…That was the case for a lot of people that were trying to process all the horror that we saw on that day. People jumping out of the buildings and, you know, just one horrible thing after another,” the Teddy Bear Award® winner said.
“I remember going to the church and just hearing the priest kind of say, ‘This has been a tough week,’ and I don’t even know if he actually said this as well or if I just heard it, but it was a call to service that would be something that would help our country through this if everybody reached out to help each other, you know, and I heard that, and that’s when I started raising my hand and going on tours. Going to the war zones. Going into the hospitals with very, very badly banged up people,” Sinise said.
As the actor continued to do that, he found hope.
“That broken heart started to heal and…the church just became a very important part. Service is…an element of the church and a very important one, and then…so I’m I’m carrying that with me through all I’m doing with the foundation and going into the hospitals,” Sinise explained.
READ MORE: WHY GARY SINISE CALLS MOVIEGUIDE® AWARDS ‘A BLESSING’
“I’m seeing, you know, really difficult stuff, but you know when you walk into the hospital and you see somebody standing over somebody’s all burned up or missing limbs or what you know, difficult very hard stuff,” the FOREST GUMP actor continued, “but you carry in…this element of [being] there to help, heal, and you see the difference that you make when you come in. You forget about like, ‘What am I going to see when I walk in the door, you know?’”
Sinise started his foundation right after 9/11. In addition to visiting the injured and their families, he started to build homes for veterans and provide other practical resources for them.
“I felt called by God and compelled to use all the tools and notoriety that I had been blessed with and all the work I had done with the military over the years to serve in a more substantial way to create something that could be here for the long haul,” Sinise said previously.
In the beginning, he was nervous about visiting hospitals, but despite seeing horrific injuries and situations, he knew that what he was doing was important.
“I left remembering all the smiles on the faces of all the people in the rooms, you know, that were there when I left and walked out of the room,” he recalled of his first experience, “and that carried me to the next one and the next one and the next one, and I’ve done that hundreds and hundreds of times over the years. I know our faith is a strong component of that. Service is a great healer, and that’s something I say because I’ve experienced it, you know.”
“I experienced it after my heart was broken with September 11th and all that had gone on. I’ve experienced it throughout the years with very difficult things that our military has faced and our gold star families and all of this, and I’ve experienced it through the cancer battle that my wife faced, my son faced, the stroke of my dad, the cancer battle from my brother-in-law. A lot a lot of that stuff and it’s helped me.”
Sinise’s son, Mac, died of spinal cancer in 2024. He was also a Catholic. As his health slowly deteriorated, he still wanted his dad to go out and help people in need. So that’s what Sinise strives to do every day.
READ MORE: HOW GARY SINISE HOPES HIS NEW MOVIE HELPS VETERANS
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