Gary Sinise may be retiring from acting — for good.
The Forest Gump actor has been through a lot in his personal life after losing his son, Mac Sinise, to cancer in 2024.
Sinise’s life changed in an instant when his wife Moira was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. Around the same time, a then-27-year-old Mac received a devastating cancer diagnosis of his own.
“It looked like a monster grabbing my son’s spine,” Sinise told People magazine in an interview that was published on May 14. Mac was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer called chordoma. According to The Cleveland Clinic, it’s a type of sarcoma that begins on a person’s spine or at the base of the skull.
Sinise kept working, taking on just a handful of jobs, including a recurring role in 13 Reasons Why. When his son’s health took a turn for the worse in 2020, Sinise left Hollywood to be with his family.
“That’s when I stopped acting. I started putting everything I had into trying to find a miracle for Mac,” he told People.
Since his son’s death, Sinise hasn’t been too antsy to get back to work. He’s enjoying spending time with his wife, who now a breast cancer survivor, his daughters, Sophie and Ella, and his grandchildren.
“Something may come along and it’ll be right, but it’s harder to leave home now,” he told People. “I just want to be around family. Since losing Mac, I hold my daughters a lot tighter. You think about the things that are really important.”
According to his IMDb page, Sinise is rumored to be a part of the upcoming film No Better Place to Die. Sinise has dedicated much of his life to supporting veterans and has done incredible work through the Gary Sinise Foundation. No Better Place to Die is about the Normandy invasion and how “the 82nd Airborne Division struggled to capture and hold crucial crossing points over the Merderet River,” per IMDb. It does seem as though this type of film would be something of great interest to Sinise — but based on his comments to People, it’s unclear if that role will actually come to fruition.
