CSI: NY Star Gary Sinise's Acting Career Began On A Hit '80s Primetime Soap
For nearly a decade, Gary Sinise patrolled the streets of the Big Apple solving murders as Detective Mac Taylor in "CSI: NY." More than 20 years earlier, though, Sinise made his acting debut offering a teenager some beer at a beach bonfire in the hit soap opera "Knots Landing."
Sinise technically first appeared as an extra in the 1978 film "A Wedding," but "Knots Landing" was his first credited role. He plays a part in the B-plot of the tenth episode of the CBS soap's first season, "Small Surprises." While the main story focuses on family matriarch Karen MacKenzie (Michele Lee) learning she's pregnant, the side plot had her son Eric (Steve Shaw) fall for a neighbor's younger sister. She invites Eric to a party with some of her friends, including Sinise's Lee Maddox, who peer pressures Eric into drinking.
It's a small but memorable part. Sinise would go on to appear in a few shows and movies until his breakthrough role as Lieutenant Dan Taylor in the 1994 film "Forrest Gump," for which he received an Oscar nomination for best actor in a supporting role.
Sinise, who won an Emmy for his title role in the 1996 TV miniseries "Truman," joined the "CSI" universe in 2004. Mac Taylor appeared in the "CSI: Miami" episode "MIA/NYC Nonstop," a backdoor pilot for the spin-off series that Sinise led for nine seasons.
Gary Sinise was not the only actor to appear on Knots Landing early in their career
"Knots Landing" began as a spin-off of the CBS prime time soap "Dallas" that took place in a Suburban Southern California neighborhood rather than in Texas. Premiering on December 27, 1979, "Knots Landing" would run for 14 years, making it one of the longest-running primetime dramas in American TV history by the time the finale aired on May 13, 1993.
Because "Knots Landing" aired almost 350 episodes over the course of three different decades, there were a lot of opportunities for guest stars, and Gary Sinise was hardly the only actor who appeared on the soap before becoming a big star. In an interview with CBS, Joan Van Ark said, "It's six degrees of 'Knots Landing' that everybody in the business and superstars to boot have all filed through the make-up room at 'Knots Landing.'"
Helen Hunt, Billy Bob Thornton, Jessica Walter, Halle Berry, Gary Oldman, and Pam Grier were just some of the now-recognizable guest stars who appeared on the show. Alec Baldwin was an especially memorable one, as he played an unstable televangelist who dies falling off a roof while trying to murder another character.
"It was probably one of the five most important times of my life," Baldwin said of his casting in "Knots Landing" in a TV special about soap operas.