By India McCarty
GOONIES star Sean Astin recently revealed the sweet way he convinced his wife to marry him.
“I got married at 21. She was 24,” the actor said while appearing at this year’s AwesomeCon. “And the way I got her to marry me at that age was by saying, ‘If we’re lucky enough and blessed enough to grow to old age, the idea of looking back across the sweep of our life, having someone who shared it with you will probably make those moments even deeper.’”
Astin joked, “And so we’ve been committed to that project.”
Related: Sean Astin Continues Mother’s Mental Health Work: ‘I Do Her Proud’
The LORD OF THE RINGS star and his wife Christine have been married since 1992. She was working for a commercial agent and called Astin to set up some meetings.
“The voice on the other end sounded as though it belonged to a beautiful young woman and, as it turned out, that was precisely the case,” the actor wrote in his 2004 memoir There and Back Again: An Actor’s Tale.
The couple met in person a few months later and “were almost instantly inseparable,” Astin wrote. “We became life partners in every way imaginable.”
Astin and Christine share three daughters — Ali, 29, Elizabeth, 23, and Isabella, 20.
In a 2002 interview with PEOPLE, Astin said his “priorities are clear. I provide for and protect my family.”
The actor shared his pride in eldest daughter Ali after her graduation from Harvard in 2023 with a master’s degree in dramatic arts and anthropology.
“I’m excited for Ali to keep creating. Her PhD Research is so important, not just for professional artists but for our entire species,” he told PEOPLE of Ali’s thesis project. “She is charting an academic path to understanding the nature of human emotion in drama. Who knows where that will go?”
The STRANGER THINGS actor continued, “Ali also has a day job working in her family’s industry, which is actually bringing us opportunities to collaborate. Selfishly, I’m beyond excited that she has asked me to direct her in a film this summer that she wrote.”
“Dad’s always been my cheerleader behind the scenes, running lines with me, giving me notes,” Ali added. “So being directed by him, having him bring my screenplay to life, working side by side — there’s a lot to look forward to after graduation.”
Astin might have plenty of Hollywood success, but for the actor, there’s nothing more important than his family.
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