HE WAS A TERRIFIC ACTOR, BUT HIS SECRET SEX PROBLEM...

Tom O'Rourke as Judge Seligman on "Law and Order"

A role he reprised in dozens of episodes

TOM O'ROURKE was a terrific actor.  As you can see, he worked all the time. But he never really got anywhere, never got to use all the talents he had or show everything he could really do. He blamed his marriage. If he hadn't married me, he could really have gone places, is what he told himself. If only he'd been free to play around, he could have scored with powerful women and gotten great jobs.

Tom got great reviews and billing playing Trask, the boss, in the nighttime TV

series WORKING GIRL starring Sandra Bullock

Tom and Sandra Bullock in Working Girl

He got great jobs. And then he started his sex romps and turned himself into a joke. As Brando says in ON THE WATERFRONT "I coulda been somebody." He could have, but he had a mental illness involving sex that he rationalized by telling himself that his marriage was holding him back. He had everything it takes for success; he was courageous, imaginative, well-liked, intelligent and good looking. 

He had the looks and the talent, and he got some good breaks,

but his sex problem ruined his career & his life

I think a lot of people with cheating problems tell themselves that their marriage makes them cheat. But the reality is you only make yourself look bad by cheating at work.  Everybody gets the impression the only reason you got the job was that you screwed around to get it. You've sold yourself out, you've sold your talent out, and you've ignored the one person who really could have helped you, your wife. 

Tom was his own worst enemy.

Tom with Will Smith on the Sparky episode of

FRESH PRINCE OF BEL AIR

He took me to his business parties only when he had to, introduced me to very few people, claiming the Hollywood show business people were a bunch of snobs. In reality, he didn't want me to meet anyone because I might hear what he was doing and break up our marriage before he was ready. Of course, people shunned me. Many must have known that he was coming on to many of the women he worked with. They figured I was just the fool hanging onto him. Tom treated me like I was worthless, so no one he worked with had any interest in me.

He played JUSTIN MARLER for 7 years on the GUIDING LIGHT

But when p & G offered him another soap

he believed the promises of one of his woman friends and turned the job down.

Of course, she was just using him, like he was using her.

In reality, I could have helped. Most businesses are all about networking. I could have networked at those parties and gotten us inside information and invites to other, smaller gatherings. But there was only one invitation Tom wanted on the job, and that was the invitation to have casual sex.

I was a wife most men would have been proud to call their own and show off, and I loved him. I was a successful high fashion model with Eileen Ford and a graduate of Columbia University. 

But love was a threat to Tom's broken personality. He couldn't be close to anyone or need them. 

His last movie, UNITED 93 filmed in England. He got to spend 6 weeks 

in England before he had a year of cancer hell and died.

What a shame he threw his talent and his seemingly happy marriage away.

This is the strangest afterlife story you will ever read. A man with a divided soul, one in hell and one in heaven, came back to confess the truth and expose how the devil ruined his life. A must read for anyone struggling to reconcile sin and mental illness.