By Movieguide® Staff
This Memorial Day, many in Hollywood will take a moment to honor the men and women who’ve given their lives for this country.
“It has become a personal life mission to honor and remember those who selflessly serve and sacrifice so much,” Emmy Award winner Gary Sinise said previously — a sentence that doubles as a mission statement for a small Hollywood roster.
These are Christian actors whose love for the troops isn’t a press-release gesture but something stitched into their families, their service records and their faith.
Sinise hosts the 37th annual National Memorial Day Concert on PBS this Sunday alongside Tony Award winner Joe Mantegna. The broadcast falls on the country’s 250th anniversary, and Sinise has been clear about what powers his decades-long campaign for veterans.
Related: Gary Sinise Builds Smart Home for Wounded Iraqi Vet
His personal stake runs through the family tree. His grandfather drove an ambulance in World War I, an uncle navigated a B-17 in World War II and his father served in the Navy during Korea — so when the Lt. Dan character in FORREST GUMP became a calling card, Sinise turned it into the Lt. Dan Band and a foundation that has built 94 specially adapted smart homes for wounded vets and served more than a million meals to troops.
This Memorial Day also marks the first since Chuck Norris’s death on March 19. The Air Force veteran and WALKER, TEXAS RANGER star enlisted in 1958, served four years including a stretch at Osan Air Base in South Korea and lost his younger brother Wieland in Vietnam.
“He lived his life with faith, purpose, and an unwavering commitment to the people he loved,” Norris’s family said in a statement after his passing. Norris won the Movieguide® Grace Prize® in 1999 for WALKER, TEXAS RANGER.
“You have to go with your faith,” he told Movieguide® at the 17th Annual Movieguide® Awards about navigating Hollywood. He never went quiet about the airmen he served with or the Savior he served after.
Mr. T — born Laurence Tureaud — held a similar two-fold posture for decades. The A-TEAM star joined the U.S. Army in 1975, made squad leader at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, and earned a letter of recommendation from his drill sergeant before Hollywood ever called.
“I am a Christian who just happens to be an actor. I am not an actor who happens to be a Christian,” he has said. He’s used that order of operations to defend the Gospel publicly through three decades of fame, including donating his 1979 Toughest Bouncer in America winnings to his Chicago church.
Actor Kevin Sorbo doesn’t have a service record of his own, but his younger brother spent 21 years in the Army and retired as a lieutenant colonel. That long-table conversation has shaped Sorbo’s public thanks to troops in the Letters from Hollywood project and at events alongside wounded vets — the gratitude of a man whose family has paid the bill.
The newest name on the roster might be Army veteran Vincent “Rocco” Vargas, who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan before pivoting into faith-based projects like LUCY SHIMMERS AND THE PRINCE OF PEACE. His work in Christian movies grew straight out of carrying both a rifle and a Bible.
Actor Dennis Quaid rounds out the list this week through a different door. The veteran star — whose father served in the Merchant Marines during World War II — receives the Patriot Ally Award at the Military and Veteran Entertainment Awards on May 23, presented by the American Legion’s National Commander.
“Those guys deserve the whole year for what they do for us,” Quaid told Fox News Digital last Veterans Day. That’s the kind of off-the-cuff line that lands when somebody actually means it.
Memorial Day isn’t a thank-you to the living — it’s remembrance for the dead. The Christians in this small circle know the difference, and they spend the rest of the year proving it.
Read Next: ‘I’m a Child of God’: Why Mr. T Shares the Gospel With Others
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