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Denis Leary Finds A Home In The Firehouse
By Cindy Pearlman
(Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)

"We have a little situation," says Denis Leary's assistant. "He can't come to the phone right now, because he's inside a burning building trying to avoid a fireball."

That's life for the creator/star of "Rescue Me," the FX fire-fighter drama that returns on June 21 for its second season.

"That was a close one," Leary says, an hour later. "I got banged up pretty badly, and I almost got seriously burned. I had to throw a 7-year-old girl out of a burning building and then jump out a window. Suddenly I'm hanging off the bucket on this ladder six stories up in the air. Then we had a backdraft type of explosion, and a real fireball came hurtling out of the building."

Under the circumstances, only one thing can calm the obviously shaken Leary: Laughing at the irony, he fires up a cigarette.

"The truth is, as soon as real firemen get done with the fire, they light up a cigarette," Leary says. "I guess it's all about leading a reckless life. And it's hard to stop smoking when you eat smoke for a living."

Leary's character, Tommy Gavin, is a chain-smoking, fearless fire fighter haunted by the ghosts of dead comrades and the people he couldn't save. He's also torn between his former wife, for whom he still has feelings, and his pregnant girlfriend, the widow of a fallen fire fighter.

In other words, Leary spends plenty of time in uniform but also plenty in the altogether, filming "Rescue Me's" graphic sex scenes.

"Sometimes it's embarrassing to film these scenes, especially when you know the actress in real life," Leary admits. "Years ago I did love scenes with Sandra Bullock, who is a friend, and it was really tough because we're friends.

"I just love it when these actors talk about how technical it is to do the sex scenes," he adds, laughing. "Sometimes it's not technical and sometimes things happen to the guy. It can be very embarrassing and a battle.

"But it's all for the sake of art!"

This season, Leary adds, the sex scenes will get a new twist.

"We're going for sexy and funny at the same time," he says, "which is a nice way to take the edge off the sexy."

There's plenty of humor in "Rescue Me," but the show can get serious very quickly, given the realities of firehouse life.

"One of the real fire fighters told me about this little girl he tried to save last year, but she didn't make it," Leary says. "He told me that now it's freaky for him, because this little girl shows up all over the place for him. He even saw her at a diner, just sitting there silently and waiting for him."

"Rescue Me" is more than a job to Leary, in part because of the memory of his cousin, Jeremiah Lucey: A fireman in Worcester, Mass., Lucey died with five other fire fighters on Dec. 3, 1999, in a warehouse fire. That inspired the Leary Firefighters' Foundation, a New York branch of which was established after Sept. 11, 2001.

"My foundation came from me wanting to help the six families who lost men in that warehouse fire," Leary says. "There were in total 17 kids left without fathers on that horrible day. I just wanted to do something. I just wanted to help."

The Sept. 11 terrorist attack, which took the lives of more than 300 New York fire fighters, gave Leary a new sense of mission.

"The only good side to that tragedy is that it brought a lot of old friends together who are the surviving fire fighters from that day," the actor says. "And now I'm helping them to raise money to help the families who weren't that lucky."

The son of two Irish immigrants, the 47-year-old Leary was raised in Worcester. After graduating from Emerson College in Boston, he taught there for five years while writing magazine articles and developing his standup comedy routines.

His sardonic brand of humor caught on, but Leary's interests had always reached beyond standup. Soon he moved from straightforward comedy to movie roles that, typically, combined ironic humor with naturalistic drama.

His big-screen roles have included such hits as "The Sandlot" (1993), "Demolition Man" (1993), "The Ref" (1994), "Natural Born Killers" (1994), "Underworld" (1996), "Wag the Dog" (1997), "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1999) and "Ice Age" (2002). But it wasn't until his Emmy-nominated turn in "Rescue Me" that Leary really seemed to find his niche.

"I've spent many years doing roles where I've said, 'I hope this works,"' he says. "I even did a lot of indie films where I thought, 'It's good work, but it won't be seen or appreciated.'

"Now I have a show that airs each week," he continues. "I walk down the street, and someone will come up and say, 'Hey, I really loved that specific scene where you did X, Y and Z.' That's new for me."

After filming ends, Leary goes home to Roxbury, Conn., where he lives with his wife and two children. Whenever he can, however, he finds time to hang out with the show's technical advisers and other New York fire fighters.

"A lot of the guys love the series," he says. "Some think I've let too many secrets out of the bag. And other guys have a hard time dealing with the series, because they walk a fine line trying to keep their emotions at bay doing the job. It's tough for them to watch the show, because it hits them in a place they don't want to go emotionally."

Not all the objections are so visceral, of course.

"Some tease me that I have more sex on the series than most of them, and they're real fire fighters," Leary says, laughing. "But then I bring up this one single, good-looking fire fighter who passed away on Sept. 11. He was a bachelor and my age when he died. You could round up movie stars, pro athletes or rock stars -- hands down, this guy was literally the most successful single man of all time.

"At his funeral there were so many single, beautiful young women that I couldn't even believe it."
Time's up, and Leary is wanted back on the set. The good news is that he doesn't have to jump back into that burning building. It's been extinguished, but tomorrow will bring another day on the set and another blaze to fight.

"I can honestly say that I'm not one of those actors who does all of his own stunts," Leary says. "I'm the opposite. I try to do as little as possible and let the stuntmen do the rough stuff.

"I guess I'm just not that brave."