Danny Pintauro of 'Who's the Boss?' Returns to Acting After Tabloid Outing, Addiction and Rejection 'Trauma'

Photo: Matthew Murphy

FormerWho’s the Boss?actorDanny Pintaurois staging a Hollywood comeback with his first major role in 30 years — a part in a Lifetime Christmas movie.

But it was a sci-fi series that inspired him to revive his career, which had largely faded since his eight-season stint playingJudith Light’s son on the ABC sitcom ended in 1992. While streamingStar Trek: Discoveryat home in Austin last year, he watched as starsWilson CruzandAnthony Rapp, both openly gay, “had this beautiful kiss,” he says in the new issue of PEOPLE.

He took it as a sign. “Something just clicked,” he says. “I finally felt ready.”

For years he wasn’t eager to get back in the game. “I had a lot of trauma from my time afterWho’s the Boss?” he says. He became addicted to drugs, wasdiagnosed with HIV, struggled financially and faced professional rejection again and again.

He recalls thinking “maybe I was a child actor, and that’s all I was supposed to be.” But he now has the outlook of someone who’s survived the worst and knows better days lie ahead. “Possibilities,” he says, “are out there.”

He was right to have faith. After telling his husband, Wil Tabares, 54, about his goal to get back into Hollywood, Pintauro quit his job as a veterinarian technician, called his former manager, secured his first audition and landed a role onA Country Christmas Harmony, playing the best friend and assistant to a country singer (Brooke Elliott) trying to boost her sagging career. “I couldn’t believe it,” he says of getting the very first gig he tried out for.

It had been decades since the New Jersey native had that kind of luck. His late mother, Margaret, a hairdresser turned talent agent, and father, John, who worked at a lumber store, got their only child into acting early. “Every single thing, I would get,” says Pintauro: commercials, the horror movieCujoand, of course,Who’s the Boss?

The hit comedy (in its heyday it had 30 million viewers per week) about a live-in housekeeper (Tony Danza) for a successful ad exec (Light) turned Pintauro into a household name. But during the show’s later years when he was a teen, the actor says, producers “didn’t really know what to do with me.”

Though he wasn’t yet out, Pintauro says his sexuality was obvious to others. “They didn’t feel like my character dating a girl was believable,” he says. So he was stuck with banal story lines like accidentally scratching a car. “I didn’t understand why,” says Pintauro, who thought, “They don’t want me to be here.” (Pintauro makes it clear that the feeling didn’t stem from his costars, including Light, Danza andAlyssa Milano, who were all “great,” he says.)

At the same time, he struggled socially at his L.A. school. “I just wanted to be a normal guy,” says Pintauro, who attended class in the morning before going to set. Once fellow students realized he wasn’t going to live up to a “celebrity vibe,” they ignored him. “I didn’t have friends,” he says. “So you’ve got two instances of me just not feeling wanted, and that stuck with me.”

WhenBosswrapped its run in 1992, Pintauro threw himself into schoolwork and went to Stanford University, where he studied to become a veterinarian. By then, “acting was not in my realm of thought,” he says. But he failed chemistry and shifted gears into the theater program.

courtesy Everett Collection

Though he says he was initially “angry,” he calmed down after fans let him know how much he inspired them following the publication of the article: “I’ve still got a box of letters from people across the country.”

New York “became an ugly place” with bad memories, says Pintauro, who began taking medication to treat the virus. For a fresh start, he moved back to L.A., weaned himself off drugs without going to rehab and tried to get back into acting.

Alas, “auditions were very few and far between,” he says. Another ego blow: He was a punch line on a 2003 episode ofWill & Grace. When his rep contacted the show to get Pintauro an appearance, they rebuffed him. “I said, ‘Well, if you won’t invite me on, I’ll buy my way on.'”

He bid on and won a walk-on role at a charity auction. But after what he terms “months of runaround” from the show, he decided not to film, he says. “It brought back all of that trauma of not feeling wanted.” He took it as a sign from the universe to move on from show business.

Pintauro tried his hand at random gigs: manager at a P.F. Chang’s, casting assistant and Tupperware sales consultant, which is how he met Tabares at a Tupperware party in 2012. An attraction sparked, and within two years they were married. “My husband,” says Pintuaro, “means everything to me.”

Milano, his friend and former costar, is thrilled he’s making a comeback. “I’m very proud of Dan,” she says. “Not only for following his lifelong dream but even more so for being a good person and staying true to who he is despite the hardships he’s faced.”

The two may share the screen again on Amazon Freevee’s upcomingWho’s the Boss?sequelseries, which will focus on Danza’s character and his daughter Samantha (Milano). Asked if he’ll appear, Pintauro is coy. “I’ve been involved in some conversations,” he says. But he’s also eager to prove he’s not just the kid from the sitcom: “I can play all kinds of parts.”

Pintauro, who recently relocated to the L.A. area with Tabares, is at peace with the idea of things not panning out, but he’s confident they will. “I can feel it in my gut,” he adds.

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A Country Christmas Harmonypremieres on Lifetime Nov. 18.

source: people.com