Gary Sinise breaks silence on stepping away from Hollywood

Gary Sinise is opening up about his 2019 exit from Hollywood.

The Forrest Gump star, 69, disclosed to Fox News recently that he decided to step back as his family was going through a “cancer fight during that time."

"Traveling away from the family wasn’t possible with what we were going through,” he told the outlet.

“My wife [Moira Harris] had been diagnosed with breast cancer. My son was diagnosed with this very rare cancer you know, within two months of each other.”

His son McCanna Anthony 'Mac' Sinise was diagnosed with Chordoma—a very rare cancer that forms in a person's spine or at the base of their skull—just months after Harris, 70, received a stage 3 breast cancer diagnosis. His son eventually died at age 33 on January 5.

“And the cancer fight for Mac was especially difficult because he was fighting this cancer with no cure,” Sinise shared. “And trying to find drugs and doctors, and trying to find anybody who could do anything for him was like a full-time job.”

“Plus he became more and more disabled by the cancer as time went on and he needed more and more care,” he continued.

Sinise also recalled how his dad had also “just had a stroke” and he had to “take care” of his mother, who was “alone” at the time.

“I kind of had my hands full,” the actor explained.

Although his wife eventually went into remission and was cancer-free, he added that it was “difficult” to watch his son fight the cancer “until he finally just couldn't fight it anymore.”

Sinise further told the outlet that his son “was happy at the end of his life," adding that Mac "had achieved something that he had set out to do, which was to record all this music and make a full album out of it."

“And that gave me a lot of joy just watching him kind of enjoy those moments,” the actor concluded.