Actors Seymour Cassel and Keifer Sutherland; singer Mindy McCready: losses can assist in whatever bottoms they need
More runners up:
Character actor Seymour Cassel, 72, who narrowly lost a bid to become president of Hollywood’s most powerful union, the Screen Actors Guild. Cassel, whose career was derailed over two decades ago by a stint in federal prison, became a member of the SAG board six years ago. One former board member “found his behavior very troubling and erratic” and says that Cassel was one of the reasons he “chose not to run again.” Cassel, the only child of a mother who was a traveling dancer and a father he never knew, is described as a “loose cannon” and has had run-ins with several fellow professionals, including former president of the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists John Connolly and former “Little House on the Prairie” star Melissa Gilbert. The cigar-chomping Cassel, who claims to have been sober for 20 years, was sentenced to six months for possessing and intending to distribute cocaine in 1981 and violated the terms of his probation several years later by testing positive for illegal narcotics before purportedly putting his life back together.
Singer Mindy McCready, sentenced to a year in jail after violating probation on a 2004 charge of fraudulently obtaining prescription painkillers. The violation involved a charge of battery and resisting arrest in July 2007. A charge of violating her probation for driving on a suspended license in 2005 is still pending. She gave birth to her son in 2006. Here’s to hoping that she’ll never forget the part where drinking and using resulted in her being held in jail while awaiting sentencing and crying to the judge, “This has been the longest two months of my life…not being able to hold my son…has been excruciatingly painful.” Indeed.
Actor Keifer Sutherland, still on probation for an arrest in 2004 for DUI, charged again with DUI. The star of “24” needs to get sober. Hopefully the court will coerce abstinence with an ankle bracelet and regular and random testing for alcohol and other drugs, rather than put him in the slammer, where he will not be able to entertain us.