Danny Pintauro is Back and He’s the Boss

Actor Danny Pintauro first hit the big screen over four decades ago in the disturbing film Cujo, when even at a very young age, having just come off a run of a soap opera, was holding his own opposite the consummate actor Dee Wallace, a rabid dog, and a particular grueling filming day.

I was six. (Dee) loves to tell the story. It’s the scene where I go into convulsions, and the producers and director were trying to explain to me what they wanted me to do. And I tried it a bit, and it wasn’t working. My mom pulled me aside and said, “Hey, when you were in the hospital, when you were a baby, you had some convulsions, and this is what you did.” And I said, “Okay!” The producers were like, “Hey, do you wanna try it again?” I was like, “Yeah, when I was younger, I had convulsions and this is what I did,” and I did it. And they were like, “That’s perfect.” And Dee loves to say, “That’s when I knew I wouldn’t have a problem working with this kid.” But how do you teach a six-year-old to scream like that and just be so convincing that people believe I’m traumatized? And Dee every take, would say, “You know it’s not real, but I just want to check in on you.” And I’d say, “I’m cool.”

He was natural. And from then, his career just fell into place. Danny’s mom was a hairdresser in New Jersey who kept Polaroids of him at her workstation. After being bugged by all her clients to send them to an agent, she sent off three photos to one modeling agency, and they called three days later. He got his first booking.

It just went from there, it never stopped. I would audition for it, and I would get it. It was a thing. I don’t know how to explain it, each thing that I got led to the next. The modeling and the commercials led to As the World Turns. I did that for four years, and the producers of Cujo saw me in As the World Turns and invited me to audition for Cujo, and the producers of Who’s the Boss saw me in Cujo and invited me to audition. Each one has a great story about how I got the job. I truly believe that it was the universe.

Audiences literally watched Danny grow up on camera as the extremely successful sitcom, Who’s the Boss, ran for 8 seasons and 196 episodes.

These younger generations don’t understand when you say that you grew up watching me. They don’t understand because it doesn’t happen anymore. Back in the day, a sitcom series had 23, 24, or 25 episodes, depending on the show. And each of those comes out once a week. And so I’m in your living room once a week for 24 weeks of the year. You grew up watching me, and we grew up together. Now with everything coming out on streaming, and all the episodes getting released at once, and people binge-watch, the concept of progressing in life along with someone else or with a show, just doesn’t exist anymore.

To avoid the isolation and trauma that can come from being a child actor, his parents had the foresight to demand that the producers let Danny attend school a few seasons into the run, which they obliged. He was able to somewhat live the life of a normal kid and then report to work. He was starring on one of the most popular shows on TV while excelling in his AP classes. But even though he was going through puberty and all the pressures of being a young teen, his character on screen was at a standstill. While he, as Jonathan Bower, wasn’t fitting in on screen, he, as Danny, wasn’t faring well at school either.

I think that the biggest factor was sort of self-esteem stuff more than anything. But some of that was self-imposed when I was in high school. When I first got to the school, everybody wanted to be my friend. Of course, you know, there’s a celebrity at the school. All I wanted to do was be a regular kid, it was my chance to just be normal. And I tried so hard, and I worked so hard to be normal that I ended up losing all of those people as friends because they were expecting this celebrity vibe. They were expecting me to sort of live up to the hype. When they realized I wasn’t going to, I suddenly didn’t have any friends for two years before I finally found a group of people who I could sort of gel with.

I’ve actually talked to some of those people since then from my high school and told them how much that affected me. They apologized because they were directly a part of it. They reached out to me to apologize because they knew that that was a thing. They said that it was also that they just didn’t understand me because, from the age of seven, everyone knew that there was just something about my essence that was not straight. So, for me, being a child actor is much less about robbing my childhood because I was an actor and more about having a messy childhood because I couldn’t figure out who I was or what I wanted.

Photography and Grooming: Matthew Mitchell / DesertLuxuryImages.com

Photography and Grooming: Matthew Mitchell / DesertLuxuryImages.com; Wardrobe: Shirt and Shorts by Parke and Ronen (Provided by Peppas Palm Springs)

Photography and Grooming: Matthew Mitchell / DesertLuxuryImages.com ; Wardrobe: Tank by St3l; Shorts by Hammies (Provided by Peppas Palm Springs)

After his long last stay on TV, he went on to Stanford. Still finding out about his sexuality, he dated girls and even got engaged. After coming into contact with members of the LGBTQ community, having left the spotlight of screen work, and being free of family pressures, he began to explore his sexuality.

While in the process of coming out and dealing with mixed reactions from his family, Danny did an interview with a local radio station about his time on Who’s the Boss. Something about the way he answered dating questions tipped them off. A few days later, the National Enquirer came calling.

That just magnified everything and really threw a big wrench into the story. In hindsight, it’s an important wrench, you know? I feel like to be one of the first people to really be publicly talking about it at that time, I always get to have that. But, at the time, it was horrifying to go through. In retrospect, I go through the mail from people saying, I’m so glad to have heard about you. The sort of impact I get to have had on people is hard to keep in perspective.

The Enquirer called and said, ‘we’ve done our homework and we’re going to write a story about it, whether you like it or not – what do you want to do?’ I was so thankful that they at least asked me what I wanted to do about it. I called Judith Light because I didn’t know who else to turn to, and I said, what do I do? She said, look, there’s one thing they can’t do and that’s misquote you. So, if you do an interview with them and you say the right things, and you’re honest and you’re truthful and make valid statements and points, it would be nearly impossible for them to turn it into a salacious article. And she was a hundred percent right. If you go back and read that article for the Enquirer at the time, you would not think that it was from the Enquirer. It’s almost heartfelt. It’s definitely sympathetic and fairly matter of fact. I was certainly surprised.

Years after coming out, he would have another coming out of sorts. In 2015, the producers of Oprah Winfrey reached out to Danny to appear on her Where Are They Now? show. Danny used the opportunity to share his HIV status to spread awareness.

We’ve lost a large number of people who understood what that felt like. We’ve come so far and I’m so grateful that we have, but because we’ve come so far, we’ve lost the sort of insight into what it feels like to face your mortality suddenly, out of absolutely nowhere, after a doctor’s appointment. There’s nothing like that feeling. And thankfully, great medications had already been created by the time I found out. So, I didn’t have the utter feeling of loss that a lot of generations before me did. The option was still scary in the sense that we weren’t a hundred percent sure what else that medication would cause. This medication that I take once a day, I will have to take until I die, unless we create a cure. Am I living happily? Yes. Am I the healthiest I’ve been in my entire life? Yes. Am I the fittest I’ve been in my entire life? Absolutely. But if I stop taking that medication, I will die. I would love to see more representation in film and television of HIV-positive, healthy, thriving characters.

With today’s political plight of the LGBTQ community and with our current boom in openly queer actors, does Danny think in today’s time there is a responsibility to come out?

It has to be right, and it has to be when you’re ready. If it’s forced upon you, then that’s just creating fear. Nobody wants that to happen. It’s a fine line because I’m kind of going through it now, in the sense that, as an actor, I want to be neutral. I want to be able to play whatever part comes my way. That, for me, is virtually impossible at this point. I have so many boxes that are attached to me that will always be attached to me. I have Jonathan Bower; I’m never going to get rid of that. I’m going to try hard to make that a smaller box, but it’s always going to be there. I have out actor celebrity, that’s a big box. I have HIV positive celebrity, that’s a big box. So, the more I continue to talk about those issues, the bigger those boxes get, when in reality, an actor really wants to have as few boxes around them as possible. At this point, is anyone truly going to believe me playing a straight married man with two kids? I could try. I could certainly try, but is a casting director going to call me once a role like that comes up?

After finishing Stanford, Danny tried to come back to LA to start acting again. He said it was a horrifying experience because there were zero roles for someone who had just been outed by the Enquirer. We were barely in the Will & Grace age.

It didn’t work. So, I left. All my life, I really felt like I wanted to figure out who I was as a normal human being outside of celebrity. That was something even as a young kid. My life goal was to be a veterinarian. So, I said, look, the universe is telling me this is a bad time to try and be an actor. Let’s go be all the other things and figure that out. Almost 20 years later, I came back to it because I saw Wilson Cruz and Anthony Rap kissing on Star Trek: Discovery. How crazy was that moment? So impactful and so important. It clicked and I said, that could be me, that should be me! I should be playing that part. And suddenly this jealousy bubbled up in me. I’m jealous of them getting to show the world this side of us. And so that really lit the fire.

Photography and Grooming: Matthew Mitchell / DesertLuxuryImages.com; Wardrobe: Swimsuit by Parke and Ronen (Provided by Peppas Palm Springs)

Photography and Grooming: Matthew Mitchell / DesertLuxuryImages.com

And Danny is back. He moved with his husband from Austin and is hitting the audition scene hard. He’s also growing another tool in his arsenal, which is almost required in Hollywood – mastering social media. He’s on all the platforms talking to his fans, sharing his life stories, and sharing his journey back to acting. And, at the age of 48, he is focusing on his physical health and getting into the best shape of his life. Sticking to his workout routine was something that he never thought he could commit to. Now, after a year, he’s found his fitness groove and goes to the gym at least four times a week.

I’ve never had body ody ody. I didn’t think I was even capable of it for most of my life. And if you go back and look at pictures of me, I’m skinny as a rail. I was barely 130 pounds wet for most of my twenties and thirties. So getting back into the business as an actor, there are only a few things that you are in control of – your skill as an actor and your abilities. Outside of that, you can control your social media, which is a new thing that I had to learn how to do, and your body. For me, it came down to me saying ‘I refuse to lose a role to someone who has a bigger social media following or a better body.’ If I can say at the end of an audition process, that I don’t think I lost a role because of those things, then I’ve done my job. So, the motivation was that simple.

Now with the SAG-AFTRA strike over, Danny can focus on getting back to his acting roots. With newfound confidence and a reenergized look at Hollywood, he wants to bring representation to the forefront.

My goal in coming back to the business is to get back to a place where I can show people my skill as an actor and gain respect as a professional actor, a dramatic actor, outside of Who’s the Boss. The entirety of my resume is dramatic work, but most people know me for my sitcom work. My goal is to get back to that and to really explore all of the possibilities when it comes to that.

And his message to his fans?

You only live once. If you feel like you’re going to look back on your life 10 years from now and regret all of the time you spent wallowing in something, or not being able to get over someone, or just not dealing with the trauma… if you feel like you’re going to look back on this time and regret that, fix it, change it.

You can follow Danny on IG: @DannyPintauro