Gary Sinise on Decision to Step Away From Hollywood After Wife, Son Were Diagnosed With Cancer

Gary Sinise is opening up about his decision to step away from Hollywood to care for his wife and late son during their cancer battles.

The CSI: NY actor recently told Fox News that he paused his acting career in 2019 and moved to Nashville in 2021 to be with his son, McCanna Anthony Sinise, who died in January from a rare spinal cancer called Chordoma, and his wife, Moira Harris, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

“We were in the cancer fight during that time,” Sinise said. “My wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer. My son was diagnosed with this very rare cancer within two months of each other. My dad had just had a stroke, and my mom was alone, and I had to take care of her. I kind of had my hands full.”

Sinise said Harris has since gone into remission and is now cancer-free, but noted that his son’s cancer battle was “especially difficult.” McCanna was diagnosed in 2018 and died earlier this year, at age 33.

“Our son was fighting this cancer with no cure,” the Forrest Gump actor said. “Trying to find drugs and doctors or anybody that could do anything for him was like a full-time job. Plus, he became more and more disabled by the cancer as time went on. … He needed more and more care.”

Sinise officially stepped away from Hollywood after appearing in 2020’s 13 Reasons Why, which saw him play Dr. Robert Ellman, and Joe Bell, where he starred as Sheriff Westin.

“I had to stop,” he explained. “Traveling away from the family for long periods of time wasn’t possible with what we were going through.”

As his family continues to grieve their son’s death, the actor added that it was important for him to fulfill his son’s final wish to release his music. Sinise released Resurrection & Revival: Part 2 earlier this month.

“He had achieved something that he set out to do, which was to record all this music in May and make a full album of it,” Sinise said of McCanna. “That gave me a lot of joy, just watching him kind of enjoy those moments.”