Bedeviled - The Strange Life and Death of Actor Tom O'Rourke

I was married for 35 years to actor Tom O’Rourke. He’d studied acting at Goodman Theater, Chicago University, on the GI Bill from his service as a paratrooper and MP in the 101st Airborne. He was a steadily working actor on Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, X-Files, Maid in Manhattan, costarred with Sandra Bullock on the TV sitcom Working Girl and many more movies and TV shows. He was a very talented actor who never realized his great potential.

For years, watching him struggle, constantly auditioning and being rejected, I felt great admiration for his perseverance. As he grew older, he attributed his increasing depression to his lack of success, eliciting my sympathy.

After he passed away, I found out that instead of pursuing success at auditions and on the job, he was pursuing the women he worked with.

His secret, obsessive delusion was that somehow these women were going to make him a star. Why would such an intelligent, talented man be so foolish? He was driven by deeply buried fears that had plagued him since childhood. He was abused by both his mother and father.

People scoff at the lasting effects of childhood abuse, but I buried a man who was abused into an early grave by the immature behavior of his violent, alcoholic, narcissist parents. This is the story of his strange double life.