Three weeks before Jon-Erik Hexum put a .44 caliber revolver to his head and, in a failed attempt at Russian roulette, fractured his skull with a gun-powder-filled blank, he ran into a friend at a fundraiser. "Jon-Erik was a bright, bubbly guy," says the friend, "very funny -- a real practical joker. But when I saw him before the shooting, I hardly knew him. He seemed alone in the crowd, removed, almost uninterested in anything."
Shortly before that, the 26-year-old actor was giving a similar impression on the patio of a Beverly Hills restaurant, where he was conducting what turned out to be his last interview. Hexum was nervous and wary, frequently qualifying his answers with, "I don't know if I want you to print that."
Perhaps he just wasn't used to being interviewed. After all, until two years ago, the only work-related questions he'd had to answer were on the order of "Which way to the men's room?"
As of 1982, Hexum was working as a busboy in a Venice, Calif., restaurant, sharing an 8'-by-12' room with "two illegal Mexican aliens" and living on leftovers and generic-brand chicken potpies.
But in June of that year, he was cast in the lead of NBC's Voyagers. While the series went nowhere, Hexum moved ahead in true Cinderella fashion. In 1983, he co-starred with Joan Collins in a hit TV movie, The Making of a Male Model, and this season he was sharing top billing with Jennifer O'Neill in CBS' new series, Cover Up. Before 1982, his only paid employment as an actor came on an Auburn, NY stage, where he played the boisterous Johnny Brown in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. (Salary: $50 a week, minus $20 for living expenses.)
Like most overnight success stories, there was more to Hexum's than met the camera's eye. A native of Tenafly, NJ, he'd been studying the performing arts all of his life -- commuting to New York for after-school lessons in music and dance, mastering the piano, violin and organ. On weekends, he was a drum major in his church band.
Although he played football at Michigan State, where he studied biomedical engineering, Hexum found acting too strong a lure to resist. After graduation, he pursued a career with persistence -- turning down offers he felt were beneath him, preferring to wait for the perfect part. He worked in restaurants at night, keeping himself free to audition during the day.
Hexum credited his mother, Gretha, with his determination. His parents, Norwegian immigrants, divorced when he was 7, and his mother worked several jobs to support Jon-Erik and his older brother, Gunnar. "She was a secretary by day and a waitress at night," Hexum recalled. "She worked her ass off just so my brother and I could have our singing and dancing lessons."
His relationship with his father, Thor, wasn't quite as happy. Hexum said he hadn't seen his father since he was 9, when, he claimed, a court ordered Thor to "get out of the state." In a cool, laconic, unemotional tone, Hexum said of his father, "We're not on the same side of the fence.
Hexum said that the last time he'd heard from his father was after the Michigan State team had played on TV. "He saw me and got in touch," Hexum said. "I told him, 'You can't reap seeds you haven't sown. You blew it, guy. Go to hell.'"
At the time of the interview, Hexum was living frugally in unfashionable Burbank. He admitted to owning real estate, but said it was purely for investment purposes. "I have money," he said, "but I still worry about losing it. We were very poor when I was growing up." His only recent splurge, he added, was buying a piano. "And I still have my '54 Chevy."
He also talked about his four-year relationship with businesswoman Debbie Davis, which ended last year. He blamed himself for the breakup, explaining that he'd spent too much time doing publicity for Voyagers. "She kept saying, "A day at the beach won't kill your career,' but I wouldn't listen, and eventually she left. I know what they say about 'He who travels fastest travels alone,' but it isn't fun being that way. I know I'm incredibly selfish. Maybe I could have taken her with me some of the time. Maybe I could have just stayed at home."
Recently, Hexum had been seeing Emma Samms of General Hospital and hanging out with old friends, including Tony Danza, "a couple of tour guides at Universal and a guy who's trying to be an agent -- guys who haven't made it."
After the accident, his friends wondered what made him put a gun to his head and utter that line that has become an instant, tragic classic: "Let's see if I get myself with this one." When he was pronounced brain-dead, one friend acknowledged that while Hexum was never suicidal, he could be reckless and had seemed unhappy. "I think he was starting to feel that being handsome was a detriment," she said. "That happens to a lot of actors -- maybe he'd come too far, too fast to get used to it. People seemed to have a hard time dealing with him on a serious level. They couldn't see past his face and his body. It was almost like he wasn't treated as a person."
Hexum expressed the same feelings during the interview. He said he was trying to fight being seen as "just another pretty face." He was enthusiastic about his role in Cover Up (as a CIA agent posing as a male model), and about co-star O'Neill (who was herself the victim of an accidental, self-inflicted gun-shot wound in 1982). But he was afraid of being typecast as a male model. "My character on Cover Up is more of a cross between Hawkeye Pierce and Indiana Jones," he insisted. "He's not really a model."
The actor was pleased with his role in The Bear, the recent film bio of Alabama football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. Hexum played Bryant's friend, Pat Trammel, a football player who died of cancer. "It was a small but awfully good part," he said. "That's the direction I'd like to go in. I'd feel better if I went against type. You know, some days I think I'm hot stuff. Others, I'm not so sure." One of his goals, he added, "was to play the romantic lead who dies."
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