Mike Fleming

Tom Sizemore BookEXCLUSIVE: Tom Sizemore, who went from the intense star of films like Heat and Saving Private Ryan to a cocaine and heroin addict whose addiction struggles and subsequent recovery played out on reality TV, has signed a memoir deal with Atria Books. He’ll write the book with Anna David and the pub date is 2013. The book will detail his rise from tough childhood in a Detroit housing project to his climb to the top in Hollywood and his eventual dark descent into drug addiction and back. Sizemore, who once romanced Elizabeth Hurley and Sharon Stone and whose performances in films from True Romance to Black Hawk Down elevated him from character actor to the star of his own TV series in Robbery Homicide Division, lost it all due to his substance-abuse struggles. At his lowest point, Sizemore was accused of domestic violence by Heidi Fleiss and traded a Beverly Hills mansion for a solitary confinement cell at Chino State Prison.

Tom Sizemore Drug AddictionSizemore began experimenting with cocaine and then heroin as his career took off. Once in the grip, he would clean up for major movie roles and then relapse right after. His soap star wife left him and after a subsequent fiery relationship with former Hollywood madam Fleiss, Sizemore got more attention in the tabloids for misbehaving than for anything he did on screen.

I always thought the reality show Celebrity Rehab was a voyeuristic exploitation of washed-up celebrities whose private struggles should not be paraded on national TV, and that it is like watching the aftermath of car accidents. But Sizemore is one actor who was able to make it through Dr. Drew Pinsky’s rehab program and pull it together. He has once again become an in-demand actor, saving his intensity for the screen as he tries to gain back the career and life he lost.

“I should have been dead many times over and honestly, I didn’t know that I was going to come back from the bottom I dropped to,” Sizemore said. “The fact that I’m now sober over two years — and that I’m acting as much as I did before — proves that people can overcome obstacles even when they’re sure they can’t. I hope that this book can inspire other people to never give up.” The world rights deal was brokered by Atria senior editor Sarah Durand and David Vigliano at Vigliano Associates.