He did stumble along the way: In his 20s, when his career wasn’t even treading water, he turned to cocaine.
Yet the “lost period” lasted only about a year.
Image via WikipediaLivingston, happily married for almost 30 years, has a 22-year-old son and a 19-year-old daughter.He likes to joke that, when his hair began to fall out, his career took off again.
He has had roles on the AMC drama Mad Men; in the 2010 movie The Social Network; in the Ben Affleck film Argo, which will be released next year; and, in a real change of pace for him, as a torturer in the upcoming horror film Hostel: Part III.
“I have been — knock on wood — very fortunate that people have accepted me as an adult actor,” the 57-year-old said. “I have aged, and I grew into the doctor, lawyer, professor — those kind of dads.”
Livingston recently published his breezy autobiography, The Importance of Being Ernie: From “My Three Sons” to “Mad Men,” a Hollywood Survivor Tells All.
He joined the cast of My Three Sons — his older brother, Stanley Livingston, played the role of Chip Douglas — on a recurring basis as the kid next door, Ernie Thompson, in 1963. But when Tim Considine, who played the oldest son, Mike, left the show in 1965, Livingston was brought on full time. And, in typical TV-universe fashion, it was explained that Ernie was really a foster child — leading the way for MacMurray’s widower, Steven Douglas, to adopt him.
MacMurray, who had appeared in movies such as Double Indemnity (1944) and The Apartment (1960), filmed in a unique way on the sitcom, which ran from 1960 to ’72. He worked two months a year with the cast, which also starred Don Grady as middle son Robbie; then, the other actors spent the rest of the year shooting their close-ups and scenes without MacMurray.
“We shot from 10 to 12 scripts a day,” Livingston said. “Before you even started production, 10 complete scripts would arrive on your doorstep. You would shoot nothing but a master shot and MacMurray’s close-up, and then you would move on to the next scene. It was an all-MacMurray experience.”
At the end of the season, he said, there would be a frantic grab to get all of the remaining scenes.
“You would sit at the kitchen table all day long, and they would do close-ups,” he recalled, laughing. “You would be sitting at the same place at the same table, and you would do a close-up from 12 to 15 different episodes. All you would do was change your shirt because they couldn’t see anything below.”
Because both Livingstons were growing, the costume designers had to buy doubles of all the clothes.
“At the beginning of the season, they would buy smalls or mediums,” he said. “Haircuts had to completely match what was eight months before. It was a continuity nightmare.”
Livingston describes MacMurray, who died in 1991 at age 83, as a “sweet man” who was very private.
“It was all business,” he said. “He was a huge star, and we were the junior colleagues in his firm.”
Livingston began acting in 1958, cast as one of the children in the Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward comedy Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys! His brother was also cast as his sibling. Stanley kept his job in the movie, but Barry wasn’t so lucky.
One scene called for Barry to stare intently at a TV set. But crusty veteran director Leo McCarey didn’t think the boy was looking at the set properly.
“In fact, I was looking at it harder than anything I had looked at my entire life. My eyes were crossing, and it looked like I wasn’t paying attention.”
He was rushed to the hospital because everyone thought he was having a seizure — until they realized he just needed glasses.
When he returned to the set wearing spectacles, McCarey wasn’t pleased.
“They said, ‘We didn’t picture Paul Newman’s son with glasses.’ I was relieved of my duties."
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