Steffanie, she is so good
for me and moderating my behavior.
She's a beautiful partner in every way.
Even though we do butt heads a few times
but that's just another visual of our love together.
Well Academy Award nominated actor Gary Busey
says his wife Steffanie is not only his soul mate,
but a replica of an angel that came to save him.
Now Steffanie says that Gary came to the beauty shop
where she worked several times
but on his third visit, he noticed her and one thing
led to another and here they are almost 11 years later.
You know people say what's Gary like?
I'm like, Gary's Gary.
That's it. What you see is what you get.
Goes to the beat of his own drum.
He's a very loud drum most of the time.
He's a hoot, very challenging.
He'll challenge you on every little thing.
In what way?
Just anything.
Name a challenge I've given you in the last four hours.
Gary is eccentric.
Gary is an underdog.
Gary--
I'm an individual.
I'm complete, individualistic.
Gary's an interrupter.
No, I'm just kidding.
I feel like everyone has misjudged him.
And everyone has a preconceived idea of who Gary is.
And they don't know what he's been through.
They don't know what his brain has been through.
I'm honestly sick of it.
Since I wrote his book and knowing his whole life story,
oh I learned a lot about Gary.
His life is so fascinating.
He's told me so many stories.
And just all of the successes he'd been through.
I didn't know this at the time,
but that a little bit of an underdog.
And I was an underdog.
And I just related to him very much.
I felt like there was so much kindness
but a lot of gobbely goop on top of that.
That we just needed to get to the center of it.
It's really hard to get him
to talk about growing up with his dad.
I feel like he was raised to feel like he was a mistake
and so anytime he would achieve success,
he would create some sort of thing to bring it down.
Hey Dad.
How are ya?
Good.
He and Luke are like buddies, buddies, buddies.
I'm the best dad in the world.
I have a trophy and picture of me and Luke to prove it.
(Steffanie chuckles)
Luke.
Well, Gary says you calm him down
so I wanted to get you right out here.
(audience laughs)
No.
Really I'm so glad that you're here.
So tell me, how did you know Gary was the right man for you?
It's very interesting you ask that.
Really we became friends at first.
And one day I was rollerblading and I was thinking about
how my age and how I wanted to have a family.
And 'cause I was like 39 and I thought,
well he probably doesn't wanna have a family.
Then I came back from rollerblading that day
and I told him what I wanted.
And he was like, no hesitations, let's have a kid.
(audience laughs)
You're a very gentle spirit with Luke.
Yes I am.
And he's obviously very loved
and a very delightful young man.
Congratulations to both of you
on having such a wonderful son.
(audience claps)
Thank you.
So you hypnotized Gary.
One time though, when we were in a small confined space
he was having a little bit of anxiety
about a lamp that made him think about being in the hospital
with his brain surgery, so--
Brain cancer.
Without him really knowing he was being hypnotized,
I hypnotized him and I gave him a mantra
to release, relax and let go.
And that's been his mantra ever since.
Right.
It works too.
So what'd you discover about him
when you were writing the book with him?
He had so many great behind-the-scenes stories
of his movies.
Like the fact he didn't have the part in Lethal Weapon,
it was already cast,
he had come up with the idea himself
to kill the captain in Dragon Under Siege,
he had all these great creative ideas,
and I wanted to get those stories in
but then I also wanted to be very deep
and I wanted people to know,
'cause he'd been telling me all the time
about the abuse he had from his father physical, mental,
emotional, and I wanted to get those stories in.
And that was very difficult for him.
Because he didn't want,
he felt like he was letting his dad down
by really not always saying
I love him, I love him, I love him.
And I wanted him to just go deep.
But at first it was--
A lot of it was how much my dad did love me.
Yes, he did love you.
Dad raised us like we were in the Navy.
Hup to!
I went to bed every night at 8:30
til I was graduated from high school.
It was that regimented.
Yeah, and I had a trundle bed.
Where there was a bed about this high
and then under was a bed
you pulled out for my little brother.
Right.
Well I ran down the hall and woo, airborne.
Bam.
Hit the trundle bed, the trundle bed goes, boom.
So my dad says you'll sleep in that for two weeks.
(audience chuckles)
So I slept there like a half upright mummy.
(audience chuckles)
It was okay, I survived.