Why you don't see William Petersen anymore after CSI legend took major step back from Hollywood
Very rarely do we find a successful actor settling for what they’ve already achieved and riding off into the sunset, head held high.
William Peterson of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fame is a case in point; having portrayed the popular graveyard shifter Dr. Gil Grissom across nine seasons - plus 2021 spin-off film CSI: Vegas - of the CBS police procedural, the 73-year-old packed his bags and bid goodbye to the industry that had sustained him for four decades.
Prior to this career-defining role, he'd appeared in an episode of The Twilight Zone (1986's 'Need to Know' if anyone's asking), as well as director William Friedkin's To Live and Die in LA and Michael Mann's Manhunter, which is notable for its first-ever depiction of cannibal serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter on screen.
Back in 2009, Petersen was even awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, so why did he take such a dramatic step back from the spotlight?
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Although the actor has never said as much - at least in public - it's safe to assume that it's all connected to a health scare he experienced on the set of CSI: Vegas.
At the time of the incident, Petersen's representative shared in a brief statement: "[William] wasn't feeling well. He is exhausted from long hours on set for the past 12 weeks and was taken to the hospital as a precautionary measure".
Four years later, the father-of-three informed PEOPLE that he'd relocated back to Chicago with his family because he had nothing left to tick off on his professional to-do list.
"I have an agent now that hasn't done anything in 15 years, the poor guy," he said. "Because I'm like, 'No – I'm not doing anything. I'm not going to do it.'
"I don't really want to do anything! Because at a certain point you realise... I've done 40 plays or whatever, I've done movies, I've done television. I managed to participate in all three mediums, in terms of what you can do as an actor."
Petersen, who breathed life into Dr. Grissom for 15 years in total, went on to admit he'd never piled pressure on himself to make it big.
"For me, it's just been a lark, really. It's been fun," he told the publication, "because I never cared whether I got something or didn't get something, because none of it was planned. It's one of those things where if you don't have great expectations, you don't have disappointments.
"I've just been lucky, and I've been able to do what I wanted, and that's really remarkable in this... well, not just in this business, but in this current world we live in, just to be able to do what you want to do whenever you want to do it. I couldn't be more fortunate as a human being, quite frankly."
And no wonder he feels that way; when Petersen first started on CSI, he reportedly earned somewhere in the region of $100,000 to 200k (£75,320 to £150,639) per episode, but the TV drama's immense standing on the box meant that this eventually peaked at $600k (£451,923) per episode.
Topics: Health, TV, Celebrity, Entertainment
Dan Seddon