Although he was seldom cast in leading roles, Mr. Forrest found critical acclaim as a character actor, including in several films by Coppola.
Mr. Forrest said he spent more than a year in the Philippines making the film, and “became almost catatonic” during the tumultuous production. When he returned to California, he increasingly got blackout drunk, functioning only “two days a week,” by his count, and tending to his hangovers with help from soup and steam baths. “I’d get depressed and drink. Now I’ve drunk enough to last me a lifetime,” he told the New York Times in November 1979, announcing that he had sworn off drinking.
Mr. Forrest appeared poised for greater success when he was cast as the leading man in Coppola’s “One From the Heart” , a big-budget musical romance that paired him with actress Teri Garr. But the film was a commercial failure, helping bankrupt Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios, and critics said that Mr. Forrest was miscast or misdirected. His follow-up, “Hammett” — a neo-noir mystery directed by Wim Wenders and executive produced by Coppola — also flopped, although Mr.
Mr. Forrest was then a youthful-looking 35, playing a rodeo-riding character who was supposed to be 18. “Hollywood never knew how to peg me,” hedecades later. “I had to learn to lie and ask them, ‘How old do I look?’ They’d tell me I looked 24 so I’d say ‘No, I’m 25’ and they’d go, ‘I thought so.’ If I had been honest and said I was 35, they would have told me I was too old.”Mr.