Steve Guttenberg was one of the most recognizable comedy movie stars of the 1980s and early '90s, appearing in some of the biggest hits of the era. Today, the actor is being hailed as a hero for helping to fight the LA wildfires in one of the hardest hit areas: Pacific Palisades.
His wife, Emily Smith, told Newsmax on Monday that the 66-year-old icon has been "fighting the fires single-handedly" with a group of his fellow neighbors in town. He's currently trapped in his own home, which narrowly missed the flames, using anything he can to put out the fires.
"He could leave, but if he leaves, he's not getting back," his wife said. "So him and about maybe 12 other neighbors have been fighting the fires single-handedly. … They've been putting out — they don't even have water. They're using pool water. They're making hoses out of things that they just have in their garages. They're using laundry detergent. Dish soap apparently puts out fires on railroad ties. They're beating fires with shovels, like they're doing anything they can to save the houses in the neighborhood."
Guttenberg spoke to The Associated Press on Friday, explaining why he's staying in the Pacific Palisades amidst such chaos. "There's really a lot of pain going on right now. I'm doing whatever I can to help alleviate it," he said. "Just this morning, I woke up, and I was really conscious of my mental state and my mental health because the last three days, I've seen so much tragedy."
The actor is being praised as a "National Treasure" by fellow stars like Jimmy Kimmel for his brave and selfless efforts. It seems that's just the kind of guy Steve Guttenberg is.
After booking roles in Diner, Miracle on Ice, and The Man Who Wasn't There, among other films and TV movies, the actor became a Hollywood force with the 1984 release of the first Police Academy. He'd go on to play Carey Mahoney in three sequels to the cop comedy, as well as star in Cocoon, Short Circuit, and Three Men and a Baby. Guttenberg has never stopped working in the industry and has over 100 acting credits to his name, but many fans still associate him with his early work. Read on to find out more about the '80s comedy breakout star.
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He took a break from Hollywood in the '90s.
Getty Images/Bob Riha, Jr.Guttenberg found fame fairly quickly, but being one of the industry's go-to comedic actors eventually got to be too much for him. In 1990, he took a break from blockbusters to reconnect with his roots, as he explained to The A.V. Club in 2012. “You gotta remember, I left home at 17. So I missed a great deal of my own growing up," he said. "I missed so many things with my family. I’d become everything I ever wanted to be. But I wanted to just be a little closer to my family. And I decided I’d like to work when I want to work, so I did theatre that I really wanted to do and I did some small independent movies that I really wanted to do and I wrote and I painted and I got to see my parents all the time.”
Luckily for comedy fans, his much-needed break didn’t last all that long. Guttenberg returned to Hollywood in 1995 to make a string of movies: The Big Green, Home For The Holidays, and It Takes Two.
He's doing a lot of TV.
Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesGuttenberg is still acting on the big screen, with recent roles including the Bruce Willis movie Trauma Center, Woody Allen's 2020 flop Rifkin's Festival, and the 2022 horror movie Heckle, you can find him just as often on the small one. He had a recurring role as a villain in Veronica Mars in the mid-2000s. In 2010, he played himself in an episode of Party Down fittingly called "Steve Guttenberg's Birthday," and he's played the same character, Colton West, across a handful of Syfy disaster movies, including the fourth Sharknado. More recent appearances include episodes of Ballers, The Goldbergs, Schooled, and Paper Empire.
He has his own production company.
Daniel Boczarski/Getty ImagesGuttenberg is the founder of Mr. Kirby Productions, which is named after his high school drama teacher. The first films produced by the company was a 2002 comedy called P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, written, directed by, and starring Guttenberg. The star told Horror Geek Life in 2022 that he's in the process of developing a show about his life.
“I’m working on a TV series about me as a young actor in Hollywood, I’d probably play the narrator, and someone younger would play Steve Guttenberg. We’re just starting to talk about the development of that, there’s nothing solid yet, but some really top-notch writers and producers want to do it,” he said.
Guttenberg also added that he's writing a book about caring for his dad, "who’s 89 years old and on dialysis."
"There are 35 million Americans taking care of their parents, that’s 16% of the population, but when you are a caregiver, you think you’re kind of alone because it’s not a group effort," he explained. "We’re going to be shopping that soon to publishers, and I think people will really identify with that."
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He's married to news anchor Emily Smith.
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Guttenberg married his second wife, New York City news anchor Emily Smith in 2019. According to People, the couple were set up on a blind date in 2014 and got engaged in 2016. They make their home in Pacific Palisades, and share looks into their private life on their respective Instagrams. Guttenberg was previously married to model Denise Bixler from 1988 to 1992. The actor doesn't have any children, but he and Smith seem to be doting pet parents to dog Gracie.
He's interested in reviving one—or more—of his '80s hits.
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With reboots, revivals, and long-awaited sequels dominating film and TV, Guttenberg told Forbes in 2022 that he'd be up for revisiting some of his early hits. “I do know that Short Circuit is being written. For Three Men [and a Baby], we wrote a script, which was sort of like 'Fathers of the Bride' and was fantastic. Police Academy is something we’ve taken to Warner Bros. several times," he explained. "These pictures, all three of them, were phenomenons, so you really have to catch lightning in a bottle, or you’re just going to cruise off some old sweat that was made. I don’t think it’s that hard to do some sequels because the audience goes, ‘Oh, I’d like to see that,’ but those three pictures that you mentioned, we’ll see."
