What Goes Around, Comes Around_ , and _You Only Move Twice_ , as well as _The Frighteners, The Fugitive, Tombstone_ (2004), and _The Great Gatsby_. When I got my first acting job, at twelve years old, I told my mom that it was only a couple of years before I was going to go to Hollywood. But because the work wasn't steady, we remained in Phoenix. Even though I felt as though I was on the verge of a whole new life, I still didn't talk to people much, preferring to keep to myself and watch movies with my friends. One day I watched a movie that my mom loved, called _The Outlaw Josey Wales_ , by John Ford. It told the story of a young man who fought in the Civil War against the South in order to help the oppressed. Not long after that, a television program called _The Men Who Loved Cows_ (or some such title) came on the air. It was a soap opera about Amish people. I immediately thought it would make an interesting movie. A year or so later, I met some Amish people from Pennsylvania. They invited my mom and me to visit an Amish community nearby, called New Wilmington, which is about an hour from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We went, and we were very impressed with their faith, strong families, and close-knit community. I had an epiphany—I wanted to live in an Amish community. When I was sixteen I got a job working at the local shopping mall near my house in Santa Fe. It was my job to keep the mall clean, and so I wore an old army surplus backpack with pouches and pockets for tools. I carried a small folding shovel with me in case of a fire. When you work alone, like I did in a shopping mall, there are people who just stare at you because they assume you must be up to something. One day a strange girl came up to me and said, "Where are you going? What are you hiding?" I was just sixteen and didn't know how to answer, so I said, "Well, I'm going to go to church." She just looked at me, and it seemed as though she didn't believe me. One day I had a serious conversation with God. I said to him, "You said I have a purpose in this world." He replied, "The Amish call it the 'Ordnung,' and it is their form of religious obedience." He also told me, "Your purpose in this world is to get married and have children." So I set about trying to fulfill those two roles. I asked my parents for money, and they sent me an old car that was in very bad shape, which the Church used to teach young people how to drive. The first thing I did was drive over to an Amish community and meet some people from whom I could get a wife. They didn't have to be of my faith, but the most important thing was that they loved the Lord. In 1979 I met a girl, Rachel Elkins, who was visiting in the United States with a mission group from an Amish community in Pennsylvania. I had gone to visit them once before, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a year before. I had gone up to the Amish farmhouse and knocked on the door. A woman named Sarah Fisher answered, and she asked me what I was doing there. "Just looking," I told her. "I'm homesick," I said. "Well," she answered, "just go down in front of the barn and there's a basket of water bottles in the straw, so drink from those." And as I was drinking I met a little boy who asked me if I was an actor, and I told him I was. But I had no intention of becoming one, nor of being an actor. It was just a simple answer to the question. When I went to Lancaster I met the minister and a couple other Amish leaders. I spent some time with them and didn't feel awkward at all, because they were very friendly and kind to me. They shared with me stories about what the church was like before it had been split into different branches, and the struggle they had with other Amish people. I met Amish girls who were also in the mission group, and who were from my own state of Wisconsin. When Rachel returned home to Pennsylvania, our friendship continued. It wasn't until she became ill and my life was in disarray that I considered asking her to be my wife. Eventually, after trying to set up a meeting between her and my mom, I suggested it, explaining that we had never met my dad but that she had to know that I came from a loving home. "Okay," she said, "I will do it." I picked her up in our car—a wreck of a vehicle—and my mom saw us from the front porch. I told my mom that I was going to ask Rachel to marry me and asked if she would give her blessing to the union. My mom was happy for me. So now I was living in an Amish community, working as a plumber for the town. (They accepted non-Amish workers.) A few years later I married Rachel and we had six children together. I loved working with my hands and helping people. I built the house I now live in, which is also the community store, and we sell groceries, books, tools, and other items there. It also has a nice café with a big dining room where people are able to sit and have breakfast, lunch, or dinner. People call us by our first names, just like in the Amish communities. My home and community are very close-knit and friendly. When I first came, I wasn't allowed to drive anywhere by myself. We didn't have a car of our own; we had to borrow one or use public transportation. My wife, Rachel, also had to get a permit from the local Amish church so that she could have her own car, and she had to get me one, as well. But after a while, everyone in my family was allowed to drive and had our own vehicles. I'm the kind of person who likes to help people with their cars, and when I moved to the community, I didn't see a single other car. But now we have all these service vehicles there in our own community—a snowplow, fire truck, ambulance, and the little "Bub" ambulance used by the fire department to drive people up the mountain when they have heart problems. So I was a big help to those people in emergencies, because it would have been very difficult for them to walk up that mountain. They would just come and pick me up and we'd go. That was fine by me, because I enjoyed helping people. I began to learn the Amish ways from the adults and from the other people who work at our store. Some of them learned English while they were living in other communities, and they came back because they missed the Amish way of life. For example, when I first moved there, there was a young Amish girl, one of our regular customers, who lived in Wisconsin and moved here. She was one of my school friends. When she came to live in our community, I'd go to work at the community store. She loved school and made great grades, and I never got over that. But I wasn't really a friend, more like a co-worker. One day after we'd been working at the community store for a long time, she came up to me and asked me if I would be interested in going to the dance with her. As I'm a plumber by trade, she suggested that she ask her father if she could get me a ride and that I could go get paid. She told me, "Just get a pair of high heels." So I borrowed some shoes, and my first kiss was at the dance. I asked her father if I could have a real date with her, and he said, "No, you're too young." I asked him again a few years later, and this time he said, "I'd love to take you." So we went on our first date. We were married six months later. A friend of mine who had studied acting sent me a script called _The Gingerbread Man_ , which was a play for children. I had to read it so many times and memorize all the lines so that I would know them when I did my audition for the movie of the same name. We auditioned in front of a committee in Ohio, and the director was impressed with me. The role was minor, but he wanted me to do it. But the director's wife was against it, and eventually she became so intense that she talked to him, got him to change his mind. The day before our first rehearsal, she called me and said that I had to take the role or leave the community. We had nowhere else to go, so I took the role. When I learned that my wife had won an acting award for the part, it was a big thrill, especially since it was a small community. As time passed, Rachel and I talked about having our own children, but it took us more than twenty years. We had three daughters, so we had them all at once. The first was named Hannah, followed by Anna, and she has a little boy named Jacob, who is now in the hospital after being born with spina bifida. I wasn't home when