By Harvey F. Chartrand
MICHAEL MORIARTY, who starred in
such classic films as Who’ll Stop the
Rain and Pale Rider, exiled
himself to Canada in 1995, following a nasty confrontation with U.S. Attorney
General Janet Reno in a Washington, D.C. hotel room. Moriarty was invited along
with network television executives and producers to hear Reno’s views on censorship
of TV violence. Law and Order, one of
the least violent shows on television, was cited as a major offender. Incensed
by Reno's campaign to “forcibly end violence on television and trample on
rights of free expression as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution,†Moriarty quit the series and left the U.S. in protest. He has
been a landed immigrant in Canada ever since. Why the fateful encounter
with Reno led to a radical (and seemingly
overnight) transformation of Moriarty’s political views from soft liberal to hard-core
conservative remains unexplained to this day. The onetime Manhattan über-liberal’s
sudden shift to “gun-toting†arch-conservatism proved to be too much to fathom for
his socialite wife Anne Hamilton Martin, and their seemingly ideal marriage
ended after almost 20 years.
Moriarty
was an up-and-comer in the early seventies. In 1973, he drew lavish praise for
his back-to-back performances as a baseball player who befriends a dying
teammate in Bang the Drum Slowly and as
a cold-blooded Marine Duty Officer in The
Last Detail. That same year, Moriarty starred in a TV-movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie with Katharine
Hepburn. Moriarty's role as the Gentleman Caller won him an Emmy Award
for Best Supporting Actor of the Year. Moriarty
then nabbed the 1974 Tony Award in the Best Actor category for his
role as a young London homosexual with a blistering razor-sharp tongue in Find
Your Way Home, beating out
heavyweight competitors Zero Mostel, George C. Scott, Jason Robards and Nicol
Williamson.
However,
Moriarty’s bid for big-screen stardom was a complete failure. In 1975, he was
cast as a rookie detective who unwittingly kills an undercover policewoman in
the Serpico-like drama Report to the Commissioner. The film (now
hailed as a masterpiece) was shredded by the critics, especially the
influential Pauline Kael of The New
Yorker, who dismissed Moriarty’s acting as unbridled hysteria. Roger Ebert
described Moriarty’s performance as manic: “During whole stretches of the
movie, (the rookie detective) seems to be in the grip of incomprehensible
tensions and fears, and Moriarty makes these so obvious we wonder why he isn’t
sent in for observation. Underplaying, providing
just the slightest suggestion of inner terrors, would have made the performance
more convincing.â€
By
necessity, Moriarty made the switch to television, appearing in series like The Equalizer with Edward Woodward and starring
as a German SS officer in the landmark
television miniseries Holocaust, which won him another Emmy.
Moriarty was also unforgettable as an aggressive professional hockey player in The Deadliest Season, one of the
greatest TV-movies about hockey ever made.
Through
the 1980s, Moriarty started turning up in increasingly lurid fare such as Larry Cohen’s
Q:
The Winged Serpent, The Stuff, It's
Alive 3: Island of the Alive and A Return to Salem's Lot. In 1986, Moriarty
starred in the fantasy science-fiction movie Troll,
playing the role of Harry Potter, Sr.! In the decades since, these films have
all become cult classics. Moriarty is especially proud of his involvement in The Hanoi Hilton, a harrowing true story
about the ordeal of American prisoners of war in North Vietnam’s most infamous
prison during the Vietnam War.
Yet the role that Moriarty is still
best remembered for is that of Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone in the
first four seasons of Law and Order (1990-1994).
Stone is an essentially humorless man of unflinching rectitude who believes in
maximum enforcement of the law, but is open to plea bargaining if conditions
warrant.
“In early 1994,
I quit Law and Order and announced my
departure in the Hollywood Reporter
and Daily Variety,†Moriarty told Cinema Retro. “My employers, the
mainstream press and even Wikipedia
like to say that it was (executive producer) Dick Wolf who fired me and not the
other way ‘round. People say: ‘Oh, well, no one fires Dick Wolf!’ Well, I did. At any rate, I had become an
American dissident. I left for Canada not too long after that.â€
After shedding his
sleek Ben Stone persona, Moriarty moved to Toronto (and later Halifax and
Vancouver) and became a radically different person – some described his
behaviour as crazy or bipolar. At age 52, after a lifetime of discipline and
abstemiousness, Moriarty began drinking and smoking heavily. The years of hard
living were evident in the thickening of his features and a noticeable weight
gain. His smooth-as-velvet voice became raspy from the constant intake of
nicotine. The onetime exemplar of virtue on television even got into a few
scrapes with the law. He was thrown into a Halifax drunk tank in 1997. In
November 2000, Moriarty was arrested for assault after slapping his former
girlfriend and manager Margaret Brychka during a drunken argument in a
Vancouver bar. The charges were later dismissed in court.
The dark years passed and, through
rigid adherence to the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and his abiding faith
in the Roman Catholic Church, Moriarty was able to lay his demons to rest. He
says he has been clean and sober since 2003.
“Canada’s
AA fraternity and their infinite faith in the power of God have brought me to a
calm and utterly sober joy in life I had never thought possible,†Moriarty
said.
Until 2006, Moriarty continued his
acting career from his home base in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, where he
lives with his lady friend Irene Mettler. Since relocating to Canada, the
former star of Law and Order appeared
in a steady stream of movies and TV shows, notably the hard-edged police drama Major Crime, Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal, Emily of New Moon, Crime of
the Century, Courage Under Fire, Children of the Dust (with Sidney
Poitier), The Arrow, Earthquake in New York, James Dean (Moriarty won an Emmy for
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie as Dean’s father), Taken (in the UFO TV mini-series
premiere episode directed by Tobe Hooper) and director Larry Cohen’s Pick Me Up episode of Masters of Horror.
Now
70, Moriarty is semi-retired from acting, mainly due to health concerns
following open-heart surgery and the lingering effects of serious injuries
sustained during a savage beating at a Maple Ridge tavern in 2002. Moriarty’s last
completed film to date is the still unreleased The Yellow Wallpaper, in which he plays a mysterious realtor.
Lensed in Georgia in 2006, The Yellow
Wallpaper is loosely based on the famous horror story by Charlotte Perkins
Gilman.
Moriarty
recently turned down a role as a baseball coach in The Sons of Summer, in which he would have shared top billing with
Tom Sizemore. “I was mistaken to think I could play the role of a baseball
coach at this stage of my life,†Moriarty explained. “I'm too lame now, walking
with a cane because of my heart failure and subsequent operation. I can’t go
waddling out to the pitching mound with a cane. I endeavored to improve my
mobility so I could make it out to the mound with a walking stick … but I have
failed at that. My walking stick could be considered by any self-respecting
umpire to be something of a weapon. Coach Pete MacIntyre would be a great role
for the inestimably talented and healthy Jon Voight.â€
Today, Moriarty's interest in right-wing
politics is as intense as ever, and he is actively campaigning for the total
abolition of abortion in the United States and the repeal of the Supreme
Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision
legalizing abortion.
Moriarty says he now lives happily away
from the limelight: he contributes a weekly column to Enter Stage Right, a Canadian webzine of conservative political
commentary. Moriarty’s views gain even
wider exposure in Andrew Breitbart’s ultra-conservative Big Hollywood webzine.
Moriarty has been called “a
quintessential Renaissance manâ€. As reporter Allison Mayes observed in a 1999 Calgary Herald piece entitled There’s no end to Moriarty’s talents: Actor,
composer, poet, pianist, playwright – a few of his endeavours, “the
award-winning American actor (…) is a classical and jazz composer, respected
jazz pianist, playwright and mystery novelist. On top of that, he’s a freedom
of speech crusader.â€
Being a Renaissance man is not a very
popular way of life these days, Moriarty noted in 1999. “People are
specialists, and they look doubtfully on those who pursue as many interests as
they can.
“I
am profoundly grateful for the exciting life I’ve had because of the performing
arts but I’m more content than I have ever been writing my editorials and
composing my Concerti for Orchestra.â€