VERY BIG Fred Dryer article (Philadelphia Daily News - December 2, 1989 ) Wednesday, 31-May-2000 18:08:59 Philadelphia Daily News Saturday, December 2, 1989 Written by Luaine Lee Quote: " 'HUNTER' ON TARGET DRYER'S MADE SHOW A SUCCESS Fred Dryer says he hasn't been afraid since he was a kid - whether he was facing the Pittsburgh Steelers' awesome offense in the 1979 Super Bowl or finessing an acting audition with so many kibitzers that he suggested renting bleachers. Dryer is an old-fashioned kind of star - the sort of guy who makes no apologies for "pretending"for a living. He's the type of person who lends stature to what he does, in more ways than one. The 6-foot-6-inch Dryer saunters into an Italian restaurant near his condo in Brentwood, Calif,on a sunny Saturday noon. He is wearing Levis, a white T-shirt and flip-flops. He stops on his way to the table for a tete-a-tete with a rosy-cheeked baby in a stroller. It's not a scene you'd expect from the tough guy Dryer portrays on the NBC-TV police drama "Hunter." It's not a scene you'd expect from a 13-year National Football League veteran, either. But that's because there's more to the lean-and-hungry Dryer than prime-time television would have you believe. Dryer is someone who thinks things should be done correctly or not at all. That is just one of his credos. Another is that anybody in this country can realize his dream if he works hard enough. Dryer vividly remembers the moment when he was cut from the Los Angeles Rams after 10 years with the team. "I had a Vons shopping box with about 20 pairs of football shoes, some jerseys and some pants and I'm walking for the last time out to my truck. I saw some people in the front office who didn't know what was going on. I waved, drove down the freeway going home. And I said, 'You know something, I feel real good about this.' Because I had done everything I could possibly do there. I had played to the best of my ability. I was successful. I made the money and invested it. Made some great friends. I did something that most of the males in the world don't do." The next day, Dryer says, he felt like school was out. The first thing he did was phone drama coach Nina Foch to sign up for lessons. Five years of drama studies and a lot of bench-warming followed as Dryer gained experience as an actor. There was, maybe, just a tad of prejudice against the former jock. But that didn't bother him. Dryer played both villains and good guys. He did some interesting work in television movies, including "The Star Maker" (1981) and "Something So Right" (1982). He also starred in several unsuccessful TV pilots before "Hunter" came along. Making the transition from hot-property defensive end fledgling actor helped Dryer find out what he was made of. "You find out how resilient and how vulnerable you really are," he says. When "Hunter" came along, Dryer was ready. He has devoted himself to the series, nursing it along from a puny also-ran in the beginning to a healthy major contender now in its sixth year. He has directed many episodes of the series and this season he became one of the show's executive producers. Dryer's work on "Hunter" leaves him little time for a personal life, for things like marriage. But that doesn't mean he's doing without romance. "What I'm doing is extremely sexy and romantic," he insists. "Everybody equates romance with having a woman. Listen, I agree with that. I've had women before. I've been there. I've been in love. I've run the gamut of that several different times. I have a child out of a great love for a woman and I don't regret it at all. It's more satisfying than I ever could have imagined. "But the romance of life is what you make of your opportunities. Romance is how you go about it. What passion do you have for what you want you do? And if anybody with any intellect sees that and understands what you are doing they can't help but understand the romance of it. And out of that comes female attraction, opportunities and money and success." Dryer is divorced from Tracy Vaccaro, who now lives in Las Vegas with their daughter Caitlin, 5. And though he is 43, he says he is not ready to try marriage again. "I can't give myself to a marriage and work at a nice little relationship when my thoughts aren't there. My thoughts are somewhere else, about doing something else for me. I'm very selfish in many ways. Now when I slow down and take on the responsibility of a wife and a family -1 don't know when that will be." Dryer is pretty particular when it comes to women. Though he stops to comment on the female joggers who pass the restaurant's window, it's not the sexy nymphets who impress him. It's the overweight, gray-haired woman barely able to sustain a forward motion that inspires him. "Look at her try," he says. "Now that's impressive." He feels women have been sold a bill of goods by women's liberation. "A woman is being told to be in the workplace. A woman, if she's going to have kids, should be at home with those kids - not dropping them off with a bottle in their face so she can get a job, dress in a nice suit, compete with a man and hope that a baby sitter or a school is bringing the kids up the proper way so she can drive a Corvette to work. That's what's wrong with the home and the country right now. We have 25 years of that mentality." Self-reliance is an out-of-fashion word that permeates Dryer's conversation. He has a way of looking at the world that he learned from his father, a sporting-goods salesman from Lawndale, Calif. His dad was methodical, organized and did everything in "the proper way," Dryer remembers, whether it was building a house or repairing a car. He died when Dryer was 17. "He never saw me play one ounce of football," Dryer says a bit wistfully. Even so, that "right stuff' legacy lives on in Dryer. He has no patience for those who curse their lots in life. "People walk around just plugging in time to draw a paycheck," he says. "They go, 'Oh, this movie star complains about how many hours he works and here I am selling newspapers.' Well, that's their fault, it's not mine. Athletes who do dope, that's their business, but they shouldn't come crying to people about it." Being a contender in the 1979 Super Bowl doesn't seem like a big deal to Dryer, who relishes in what others might feel are impossible dreams. "As I walked off the field in 1979 after playing Pittsburgh I realized, 'So this is what it's like to play in the Super Bowl. Gee, it's certainly nothing to be in awe of. I was always capable of playing in a Super Bowl. However, let's always remember the feeling of what it was like to be a part of excellence.' There's no substitute for excellence, for intelligence, for preparation. For doing it properly." Doing it properly wasn't always easy. Dryer says he failed every day of his life until he was 35. But he never felt like a failure. "I failed every day at everything I was trying to do. That was because I was always pushing myself, stretching, whether it was in practice or off-season work. Everything else is boring if you're not pushing yourself." Dryer has been applying some of that single-minded determination to "Hunter." And he's proud of the result. He points out that it has the best improvement curve of any show on television. "The first three years, this was a bad show," he says. Though its ratings steadily increased, "Hunter" has never been nominated for an Emmy. That rankles Dryer. He thinks the Television Academy is overlooking the show because it has a jock for a star. Though it is a product of the Stephen J. Cannell studio, which is responsible for "The Rockford Files," "Wiseguy" and "The Greatest American Hero," "Hunter" gets no respect, Dryer says. "It's like being on an all-star team in football. The players know who plays. The coaches know who plays. The press doesn't." Dryer carries his sense of purpose into his attitude about success. "It's a difficult responsibility," he says. "It's an appetite that must be fed. You have a responsibility to feed it and that entails a lot of work. At the same time, if you have a successful life that's public you magnify that 10,000 times."