Free There and Back Again by Sean Astin with Joe Layden

commitment, or lack thereof, to physical conditioning. Make it part of my daily regimen? Nah. I’m not a granola guy. Although I admire granola guys, I happen to love greasy food. Always have, probably always will.
    The other obvious logic is that I needed to be fit and attractive for my career, but that didn’t resonate with me as being righteous. To be good-looking for the sake of being good-looking, well, that just bothered me. I wasn’t ever “turn-heads-on-the-street” good-looking, and never would be. Once, many years ago, I had a great photo session when I was in the best shape of my life. I was waterskiing a lot, running, and lifting weights, and my metabolism was still roaring in the way that it does when you’re almost out of your teens. By twisting and turning my body, and lighting the set just right, the photographer managed to transform me into someone I barely recognized. Someone with a solid, square jaw, and if not a six-pack, at least a two-pack. I look at those photos now and almost laugh about how good I look. But sustaining that? No chance. I was more concerned with the entrepreneurial part of my career, even if I understood on some level the importance of just simply looking good. It makes sense from a business standpoint to focus on the basics of being a movie star, and part of that is being in great shape. It just didn’t interest me to focus on it consistently.
    For Rudy , however, I was willing to accept almost anything the role required, and that meant not only getting fit, but staying fit during filming. We began shooting in the fall, just as the leaves were changing in South Bend. Only months earlier I had married a Hoosier whose family lived a scant twenty miles down the road, so everything about the project felt right. On the first day of filming, the mayor of South Bend showed up on the set and welcomed everyone to the city.
    He had a special message for me: “I don’t know what your political aspirations are, but there’s a little history here, you know? The last person who starred in a movie filmed at Notre Dame went on to become president of the United States.”
    He was referring, of course, to Ronald Reagan, who had portrayed the heroic but doomed Notre Dame running back George Gipp in The Knute Rockne Story . (Yes, I know, Reagan wasn’t really the star. It was Pat O’Brien who played the titular character.) It was a nice thing for the mayor to say, and I kind of chuckled and tried to be appropriately gracious. This was a nonpartisan event, so I didn’t make a big deal out of the fact that Reagan was famously Republican and I was a Democrat. And while I wasn’t yet famous, I did (and still do) have political aspirations of my own. Never mind that the press conference was being held during our lunch hour and I hadn’t had time to change out of the football uniform I had been wearing. I felt at best unworthy, and at worst a little fraudulent sitting there pretending to be a bona fide, hard-core Domer! The appropriate thing to do was to keep my mouth shut, focus on the work, and try to honor the integrity of the movie.
    The real-life Rudy, who has become a Notre Dame icon almost as recognizable (in name, at least) as the Golden Dome or Touchdown Jesus, had arranged for me to have access to all of the school’s athletic facilities, including the football team’s locker room and weight room. I had a personal trainer. I lifted weights and ran every day. When the weather was bad, I worked out on a stationary bike that I had begged for, and that Rudy had arranged to have sent to our house. It occurred to me that I was being treated like the star of a movie, and while there was a certain pressure associated with that position on every level, I enjoyed it.
    Christine, too, was happy. We had our “boy” with us, a Siberian husky named Byron. She could visit her family every day, and on weekends we’d have dinner on the