Ask American Profile 4/1/2007

Q I saw the movie Patch Adams again recently. It made me wonder: Where is the real-life doctor today on whom the film was based? Did he ever get his free hospital up and running?
—Jean Rexford, Crescent City, Calif.

Dr. Hunter “Patch” Adams, 51, is based in Arlington, Va., where he continues to promote alternative health care with the Gesundheit! Institute, which he founded in 1972, and takes frequent trips with “volunteer clowns” to bring smiles and laughter to places of suffering around the world. A native of Washington, D.C., Adams and his laughter-is-the-best-medicine approach were dramatized by Robin Williams in the 1998 movie Patch Adams. The free, holistic-care “silly” hospital that his movie character dreamed about has not yet become a reality, but it’s in the planning stages and targeted for a 310-acre rural area that Adams’ institute owns in West Virginia.

Q I loved Ed Begley Jr. on St. Elsewhere. What’s he doing now?
—Bee O’Reilly, Frederick, Md.

Begley, 57, is the star of the HGTV network’s new Living With Ed, a reality series that shows the often-comical chemistry between the ardent environmentalist—who lives a passionately “green” lifestyle—and his wife, Rachelle, who longs for more conventional comforts in their solar-powered, two-bedroom Hollywood home. Begley has worked consistently since St. Elsewhere ended in 1988. He has several new movies in the works and played a recurring role in last year’s season of TV’s Veronica Mars.

Q I hope David Hyde Pierce, who played Niles on Frasier, gets his own sitcom some day. What can you tell me about his upcoming projects?
—Margaret Voynar, Chapel Hill, Tenn.

When Frasier ended its successful nine-year run on NBC in 2004, Pierce, 48, announced he wanted to return to the stage, and did just that. He recently completed a role in Monty Python’s Spamalot, a Broadway spin-off of the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and he stars now in Curtains, a new musical comedy at New York’s Al Hirschfeld Theater. He has no immediate plans to return to television, but stay tuned.

Q I say Richard Dawson from the old Family Feud TV show is alive and well, and my husband thinks he died some years ago. Please settle this, as we have disagreed long enough!
—Carla Wrobbel, Westland, Mich.

You win this one. The famous game-show host, 75, is alive and happy in Beverly Hills, Calif., with his wife, Gretchen, whom he met when she was a contestant on Family Feud in 1981. He is enjoying retirement and spending time with his daughter, Shannon, and his three grandchildren.

Q Claire Forlani has an on-screen romance with Gary Sinise in CSI: NY, but is she involved with anyone in real life?
—Adrienne M., Artesia, N.M.

Last September, Forlani, 34, became engaged to Desperate Housewives actor Dougray Scott, 41, who personally designed her ring. They were introduced by a mutual friend in 2005. Previously, the British-born actress has been romantically linked to actors Benicio Del Toro, Keanu Reeves, John Cusack and Ben Stiller.

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