Actor Craig T. Nelson has had a long career in Hollywood, both in film and TV, but the
role he's probably best remembered for is football coach Hayden T. Fox on the '90s ABC
sitcom Coach.
He won an Emmy for his work on the hit series, and went on to star on two other long-running
shows: the CBS cop drama The District and NBC's family tearjerker Parenthood.
He still pops up in movies here and there, but for the most part, Nelson isn't as much
of a screen fixture as he once was.
Here's what he's been up to.
Letting go
Nelson landed the part of patriarch Zeek Braverman on Parenthood right after he turned down a
similar role on a more popular show: ABC's Modern Family.
Nelson was offered the chance to play family patriarch Jay Pritchett— a role that went
to Ed O'Neill.
In an interview with Access Hollywood Live, Nelson said he "liked the script" and "liked
the people" on Modern Family, but the producers didn't offer him the amount of money he felt
he deserved.
After six seasons, Parenthood left the air in 2015 with — spoiler alert — a pretty
devastating finale: Zeek dies after a long battle with heart problems.
Nelson wasn't happy about the way his character or the show went out, telling the Hollywood
Reporter,
"I think the series should have gone on.
I still don't know why it was pulled."
He added that he "never got on board" with his character dying, although he thought the
death was "really dignified, nice and emotional."
Failed revival
In 2015, after Parenthood came to an end, NBC attempted to bring back ABC's Coach.
The network was so confident that the Coach revival would work, in fact, it skipped the
pilot phase and ordered the show straight to series—set to star Nelson and several
other original cast members.
"It's gonna be a risk, y'know, it's gonna be fun.
That's what's so exciting about it.
Trying to make it work."
The plot focused on Hayden Fox's adopted son Tim launching a football program at a prestigious
college, and enlisting his recently widowed father to help.
But in August 2015, NBC canceled the project after only one episode was filmed in front
of a studio audience, which was never released and has yet to be leaked.
Promising pilot
It looked like Nelson had a big TV comeback in the works in 2017 when he was cast in the
pilot for Raised by Wolves.
The comedy had an impressive pedigree: Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody wrote the pilot,
based on a British series co-created by popular English humorist Caitlin Moran, about a single
mother raising five kids.
This Is Us producer Greg Berlanti came on as an executive producer, and the cast included
Georgia King of HBO's Vice Principals.
ABC passed on the show, and producers tried to shop it around to cable networks… but
there haven't been any takers yet.
Charity work
While Nelson once famously weighed not paying income taxes to protest the "welfare state"
"I've been on food stamps and welfare.
Anybody help me out?
No."
… he's given plenty of his time to organizations that help others get back on their feet.
Nelson has worked with a drug and alcohol rehabilitation charity called the Drug Education
Council, and spoke at the organization's annual luncheon in 2017.
In 2009, he mentioned on Hannity that he supports Dogs For Vets, a group that pairs shelter
dogs with returning military personnel, as well as a group that grants scholarships to
veterans' children.
Extracurriculars
The guy who played a coach in All the Right Moves and Coach doesn't stand on the sidelines
in real life—instead, he's an active golfer.
In 2013, he told the Golf Content Network that he has a handicap of eight—which, as
golfers know, means Nelson is pretty good, although he says, quote, "the ability to maintain
that number seems to come and go."
His strengths are chipping and putting, which he says he'll practice for up to two hours
a day.
He's also a regular at celebrity-studded pro-am tournaments.
Nelson also loves motorsports.
In fact, in 1991, he went to auto racing school, and soon after entered the Toyota Celebrity
Long Beach Grand Prix, finishing in third place.
At that point, Nelson said he was "hooked": He started driving in the World SportsCar
series, also known as the International Motor Sports Association, and told Motor Trend that
it was tough to break into the sport and to be taken seriously.
But Nelson proved he had the right stuff, and was voted the racing organization's "Most
Improved Driver," which he quipped "was better than winning the Emmy."
A look ahead
Nelson has worked steadily since Coach ended in 1997, and it looks like he'll be busy in
2018.
Nelson will join an all-star cast in the comedy Book Club, about a group of women in their
sixties whose lives get a jolt of excitement when their book club reads—and really gets
into—Fifty Shades of Grey.
Nelson's most famous gig—and the one that made the most money at the box office—involved
only his voice.
He was Bob Parr, a.k.a. Mr. Incredible, in Disney/Pixar's 2004 superhero movie The Incredibles
— and a sequel is in the works, set to be released in June 2018.
Plot details are scant, but director Brad Bird said that Bob has shifted gears to become
a stay-at-home dad, living in a new house "that's a cross between a dream house and
a super lair."
"Brad has done such a good job on the story, and John Walker, and it's like, it's a lot
of fun.
And, um, I think it's gonna be great."
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