Toy Story 5 star Tim Allen has opened up about losing his father to a drunk driver at just 11 years old. The loss left Allen’s mother to raise her children alone, and she remarried two years later. In a recent interview, the veteran actor addressed that painful chapter and how deeply it shaped his early years.
Tim Allen shares how his father’s death affected him and his family
Tim Allen recently got personal about his father’s death, detailing how the loss reshaped his childhood and tested his family’s strength.
Fresh off reprising Buzz Lightyear for Toy Story 5, Tim Allen sat down with Us Weekly and reflected on losing his father, Gerald M. Dick.
His father passed away after a drunk driver swerved across a snow-covered highway near Denver and crashed into the family car in 1964. Allen’s dad sustained a broken neck and passed away in his mother’s lap.
“I turned into my spiritual or metaphysical or religious self,” the Wild Hogs actor revealed. “My blood father was really involved in pruning the car [and] all the stuff I really like now. My dad got me into that. I really missed that connection. I didn’t have that with my stepfather, but he was an extremely wonderful guy.”
The tragedy derailed Tim Allen’s life. He admitted that he struggled through his mid-20s and became involved in criminal activity. At around 25, police arrested him at an airport in Michigan after finding cocaine in his possession. But Allen entered a guilty plea. And his cooperation earned him a reduced sentence. He ended up spending around 2 years and 4 months in prison before his 1981 release.
About that time, he revealed, “When I was incarcerated, I started reading books [about] men and women who had been successful out of nowhere, and I started focusing on where I wanted to be. “I did not want to do that ever again. I humiliated my family, friends, and myself. I did not want to make that mistake [again].”
Later, Allen rebuilt his career and became a respected TV star and voice actor.
