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You are here: Home > Interviews & Print Media > Rollins In Seclusion, His Acting Career In Jeopardy
Phil Kloer | Orlando Sentinel - May 6, 1993
COVINGTON, GA. — Howard Rollins' promising acting career began to unravel on the roads of Rockdale and Newton counties 11 years after his Oscar nomination for Ragtime, a mere five years after his acclaimed performance of Othello at the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival.
In contrast to his buttoned-down image on CBS' In the Heat of the Night, Rollins sometimes wore a long, startling wig of dreadlocks when he cruised the North Georgia roads last year in his maroon 1993 Lincoln Mark VIII.
He was arrested three times in eight months for DUI, reckless driving and speeding, leading to jail time and intensive treatment for substance abuse.
Now, with his criminal file in the Rockdale County Sheriff's Office half an inch thick and growing, Rollins is virtually incommunicado - probably in New York City - a fugitive with two outstanding Georgia arrest warrants. If he returns to Covington, 30 miles east of Atlanta where filming started April 28 for the seventh season of Heat of the Night, he will be arrested and almost certainly jailed.
''It's a terrible curse,'' Heat star Carroll O'Connor has said of what he calls his friend and co-star's ''substance-abuse problems.''
''He's one of the sweetest, gentlest men I know, and one of the most gifted actors,'' O'Connor told a small group of TV writers in Los Angeles earlier this year. ''I want to preserve him.''
Besides his legal problems, Rollins, 42, faces an unspecified health problem. In January, he was given a medical discharge from the DeKalb Diversion Center's CHANCES Program, a treatment center for substance abusers. ''The defendant's health status precludes his ability to complete the program,'' a court document states but goes no further. People involved in Heat and at CHANCES cite Rollins' privacy and won't talk about his health.
Tabloids have questioned whether Rollins is HIV-positive and/or has AIDS, stories that O'Connor responded to in January.
''HIV victims lose weight,'' O'Connor said. ''If anything, he has a (over)weight problem. If he's sick, he's the strongest-looking victim I've ever seen.''
O'Connor, while not denying the reports outright, has a valid point. In recent appearances on Heat Rollins has looked heavier than in seasons past.
By all accounts, O'Connor is apparently the only one in the Heat company who has been in touch with him since he left the set in January and practically vanished.
John Yavroyan, Rollins' manager, has deflected attempts to talk to his client, and O'Connor declined to be interviewed for this story because he was preparing to direct the fall season premiere.
That episode will send detective Virgil Tibbs, Rollins' character, off to law school to account for Rollins' absence from the show. When the Sparta City Council finds out that Chief Gillespie (O'Connor) is having an affair with a councilwoman, Gillespie is fired. He is replaced by a new top cop played by Carl Weathers, best known as Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies. Gillespie will become a sheriff on the show.
How long that plot line lasts depends in part on whether Rollins returns to Georgia.
Early on, Rollins' career seemed as promising as anyone's. ''The very thought of having an actor in the family was a flight of fancy,'' Rollins once said of his roots as the son of a Baltimore steelworker. He started his stage career in 1974, appearing on Broadway and off-Broadway, eventually working his way up to the Stratford Othello in 1987 and, soon after, the London run of I'm Not Rappaport opposite Oscar winner Paul Scofield.
Television exposure came in the late 1970s, when he played Andrew Young in the miniseries King and George Haley in Roots: The Next Generation.
But it was his two major film roles that brought him the most stature. For 1981's Ragtime, he was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Coalhouse Walker, a proud piano teacher who becomes a vengeful revolutionary.
In 1984's A Soldier's Story, he played Capt. Davenport, the poised lawyer investigating the death of a black sergeant at an Army base in the South during World War II.
While making Ragtime, Rollins talked about his strong desire as a young man to succeed as an actor:
''I didn't want to get to a stage in my life where I would have to say, 'I used to . . . or I could have been.' ''
With his career on the line, Rollins may be approaching that stage. But his job as Tibbs is still open, and his friends at Heat hope he will return.
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'The Tibbs character has not been written out,'' says producer Herb Adelman. ''If Howard can work out his legal problems, he's more than welcome to come back.''