Why I Dropped Everything for My Dad

WHEN THE POLICE ACADEMY STAR'S FATHER GOT SICK, HE TRAINED TO BE A DIALYSIS TECH SO HE COULD TREAT HIM AT HOME: 'HE WAS MY HERO'

- GILLIAN TELLING

As Steve Guttenberg became a movie star in the 1980s, with hits like Cocoon, the Police Academy franchise and Three Men and a Baby, one man was his biggest fan. “My dad loved my success,” the actor, 65, recalls of his father, Stanley, who had been an NYPD officer and later worked as an engineer before his death at 89 in 2022. “He went to all my premieres. He had such a great time with it.”

The fandom was mutual. So much so that when Stanley was diagnosed with kidney disease in 2017, the actor didn’t hesitate to start waking up at 3 a.m. and driving round trip from L.A. to Phoenix, where Stanley lived, once a week to escort his father to dialysis treatments. “There was no thought to it at all,” he says. “My dad was my idol.”