But it was a roller-coaster-ride relationship.” Later, he won over her parents by singing the kiddush, a Jewish ceremonial prayer, over dinner: “My father had a glow, like I’d finally found a nice Jewish boy. “He had the most beautiful bass voice and jet-black hair,” she says.

That girlfriend, who now goes by Carol Davidson Baird, fell for him in November 1965 when she heard him playing folk music along the Sunset Strip at The Fifth Estate, a hub for the city’s emerging political New Left. There was no question about what I wanted to do for a living from that moment on.”Ī Marine Corps portrait of Ross from 1965 Aesop riding his motorcycle in Venice Beach in the late 1960s. Getting your own dressing room, your own makeup girl: The bug bit me. “But I had the part, and it did spoil me forever. “I was terrible - jiminy Christmas, was I bad,” he said. Landing the role of Theseus in a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream set him on a lifelong path. They played ballads and folk songs: Aesop on string bass, Sinatra on piano and serving as emcee.Īesop, who’d been interested in acting since he played with puppets as a child, studied performance at what’s now the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada. The two formed a band called the Outhouse Four. “Today, we call them ‘creative.’ ” He roomed with Frank Sinatra Jr. “Back then we were called ‘problem children,’ ” Aesop explained. Photographed by Rainer HoschĪesop was sent to a boarding school catering to the kids of the rich and famous in Idyllwild, three hours east of Los Angeles. Aquarian (the “T” stands for “The”) and an alternate stage name, Stephen Morrell. In this collection of headshots, he’s identified as both Aesop T. It was like trying to get blood out of a stone.” He adds: “The core issue in our family was that there just wasn’t much love.” She was betting her whole future on this love she hoped she’d get from my dad, and that didn’t happen.

She was very prone to uncontrolled rages and screaming. Mom wanted to be kind of a celebrity wife - she wanted to be in that role. Dad was extremely self-involved, narcissistic. “We didn’t come from a typical Jewish family in that we weren’t very close. “ was outwardly rebellious, and he got into shit-tons of trouble - smoking cigarettes, running away - and he was beaten by Dad,” says Don Ross, his younger brother by six years, now a licensed marriage and family therapist.

Aesop’s father, a West Coast executive for the family’s rubber-manufacturing business, was his son’s nemesis. Marvin Davis, still decades away from his acquisition of 20th Century Fox as well as the resort itself, would often make a move on the family’s favored cabana.Īesop’s maternal grandfather, Albert Kahn, was a Jewish Lithuanian immigrant turned New York merchandising tycoon and philanthropist who came to own, among other businesses, Spear & Co., the country’s largest home furnishings chain as of the early 1950s.

He remembered catching sight of Lauren Bacall when he was of a tender age. Weekends were spent goofing off at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Sand and Pool Club, where his family had a membership. But as a character actor, you could work forever.” Other neighbors included Cesar Romero, Fred MacMurray, and Judy Garland and her husband, Vincente Minnelli. The wife of neighbor Cecil Kellaway, an actor twice nominated for an Oscar, “used to give us marmalade because she used the oranges from our trees.” He took Kellaway’s career advice to heart: A star has “five years, maybe 10 years if you’re lucky. Think fiction, but it happened.Īesop grew up wealthy in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, when the name of the local Country Mart still reflected the largely bucolic setting’s avocado groves. Think Forrest Gump, but sharp-witted Barry Lyndon, but downwardly mobile Cliff Booth, but a hippie. Where he starred, though, was in his own epic journey across the vivid margins of the entertainment industry, from Old Hollywood to New Hollywood to the Streaming Beyond. In the entertainment industry, he was a bit player, not a leading man, making ends meet with background work, music gigs and assorted side hustles. He died May 27 at 77 years old, after speaking at length about his life with The Hollywood Reporter.

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