THOMAS F. WILSON: I see people especially in a place like New York or Los Angeles who are so busy trying to be something so that people will give them a job that when they get the job they’ve confused, even to themselves, who they are. What do they have to draw from?
CHRIS NEUMER: So you become your persona or your pen name?
THOMAS F. WILSON: Aristotle said the mask an actor wears becomes his face.
CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, that does beg a Biff question, doesn’t it?
THOMAS F. WILSON: (laughs) You’re giving up the gold medal…
CHRIS NEUMER: I’m not mentioning the trilogy. I’m staying true to my word. Last question for you: You had an inordinate amount of success very early in your career, how did that shape your perspective on things?
THOMAS F. WILSON: I’ll tell you what I’ve come up with, and I’ll be honest with you, Chris, we can talk about it now, why not?–
CHRIS NEUMER: We don’t want to, that’s why not.
THOMAS F. WILSON: How it shaped my perception is this: I have become so indelibly identified as a character in pop culture that it has forced me to go deeply within myself to get a very very rock solid sense, to myself, of who I am. That has been a great, great gift to me. Being known as something else than what I am by everyone I come across in life has forced me to strengthen the sense that I have of myself. Now in this middle part of my life, I’ve got to tell you, winds come, storms blow, and I have problems, but I feel pretty rock solid. Does that make sense?
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah. And I tell you this in the most non-strange way, given how many interviews I’ve done with people in Hollywood, there aren’t many people who look at things from a very grounded perspective. People who can look at the bad times they’ve had and draw positive things from them for when they’re up. Not many people are grounded. There aren’t very many people who think in terms of, let’s say, positive humanism. It makes perfect sense to me, it’s just amazing more people don’t feel the same way.
THOMAS F. WILSON: Honestly, Chris, the great part about me and I don’t mean it with any offense, I don’t care what people think of me. (laughs) People say, "How do you want to be remembered?" I tell them, I don’t care IF people remember me. I really don’t. I have every bit of confidence that my children will remember me with great love and charity–
CHRIS NEUMER: They better, or they’re out of the will.
THOMAS F. WILSON: Or my wife and friends. Some people like the way I work, others don’t. I wish them all well, but I don’t care.
CHRIS NEUMER: It seems freeing.
THOMAS F. WILSON: I think it is. It hasn’t come without cost, without the pain of being on the other side. Being a young man in my late twenties, thinking I’ll never escape this. Everywhere I go, every plane I’m on, every restaurant I’m in… but I really couldn’t care less.
CHRIS NEUMER: You should probably take comfort in the fact that you’re not on that WB reality show, [The Surreal Life] the one with Corey Feldman and the other passed their prime actors.
THOMAS F. WILSON: That’s exactly–that’s the opposite of what I’m about. Hey, you can do whatever you want. Sometimes I don’t even understand myself because so many other low level celebrities like myself will go around and embrace that as their identities. They’ll got to the restaurant and say, "Hey, does this face look familiar?"
CHRIS NEUMER: I’d like four reservations for Thomas F. Wilson, you may remember me from…
THOMAS F. WILSON: And that, wow (whistles) that makes my skin crawl. I prefer just being me and waiting an hour for a table if need be.
CHRIS NEUMER: Outside of the waiting part, it sounds good to me. Is there anything else you want to add, something else that’s important to get on tape?
THOMAS F. WILSON: I don’t think so… unless you have something else you’re interested in.
CHRIS NEUMER: Just photos of you.
THOMAS F. WILSON: Here’s the problem, I never do this stuff, I don’t have a publicist, I don’t go to photo shoots, I’m a very difficult person in this way. I’m not Greta Garbo, but I’m in the on-deck circle of that "who cares"–I don’t do it because everyone asks the same stuff–
CHRIS NEUMER: Not me.
THOMAS F. WILSON: Not you and, hey, it’s been a great interview. But I don’t have a press packet I can send you. I just kind of do my work and go home. I’ll look around and see what I can find.
