Tragic Details About The Remember The Titans Cast

Based on a true story, "Remember the Titans" revolves around a high school football team that was forced to integrate in 1971. Taking place at a pivotal point in history, the film depicts racial tensions in Virginia during that time. Against the backdrop of segregation in restaurants, racial slurs, and fistfights at school, players from different racial backgrounds learned to work together as a team. As one of the biggest civil rights sports movies of all time, "Remember the Titans" offered a close depiction of the hardships and struggles that the team faced.

"The movie is actually very close to what happened," the real-life Coach Herman Boone told The Observer-Reporter. "There are only about four or five things that were not true, but they weren't actually false either." In the movie, Gerry Bertier was paralyzed in a car crash the week before the state championship game. While the accident took place after the game in real life, Bertier's injury was real. Like the characters who have to overcome several challenges and hardships as a team, the actors who played them have also gone through a lot in life. Many cast members of "Remember the Titans" are in completely different places in life since they made the movie.

Denzel Washington (who played Coach Herman Boone) had a 15-year drinking pattern, in which he switched between being drunk and doing movies. He was in denial about his problem for years because of his ability to remain functional as an actor. "I never drank while I was working or preparing," the actor told Esquire. "I would clean up, go back to work — I could do both." However, as soon as filming stopped, he would go straight into drinking until his next gig. "Many months of shooting, bang, it's time to go. Then, boom. Three months of wine, then time to go back to work." 

He admitted that it started way before his Hollywood days, tracing it back to his childhood friends when he had "one foot in the streets." "It probably has more to do with Frank and those guys. It probably started then — well, to be honest, that is where it started," he said. He had done drugs in his life, but wine was something else. There's a whole culture built around wine tasting, and Washington was deep into it. He even built a 10,000-bottle wine cellar back in 1999. "I had this ideal idea of wine tastings and all that — which is what it was at first." The transition into alcoholism was subtle, but the years of abuse had an irreversible impact. "I've done a lot of damage to the body," the actor said. He has been clean since 2014.

Ryan Gosling (who played Alan Bosley) rose to fame after starring in all-time romance favorite "The Notebook" opposite Rachel McAdams in 2004. By the time of 2013, he had become a major film star, having headlined a few cult classics including "Blue Valentine" and received an Oscar nomination for playing the lead role in "Half Nelson." However, there's an untold truth about "The Notebook" star. While promoting "The Place Beyond the Pines" in 2013, Gosling shared that he needed a break. "I've been doing it too much," he told The Associated Press (via E! Online). "I've lost perspective on what I'm doing. I think it's good for me to take a break and reassess why I'm doing it and how I'm doing it." 

In 2009, he gained 60 pounds for a role and was fired due to the weight gain and took a necessary break. He appeared in six films within three years, and in 2013, he was facing a major burnout. "I need a break from myself as much as I imagine the audience does." Despite all the success, he struggled to find meaning in what he did, and it wasn't until recently that he started to prioritize his family and focus on doing what makes him happy, which includes turning down dark roles. "I think for so long, I was just trying to pay the bills and work," he told The Wall Street Journal in 2024.

Ryan Hurst is now completely unrecognizable from his memorable portrayal of Gerry Bertier in "Remember the Titans." After the movie, the star went on to join FX's "Sons of Anarchy." The star bonded with his SOA family the way their characters did on-screen. "These people are much closer than just friends or acquaintances," he told Entertainment Weekly in 2012. "When I buddied up with these people, I was like, 'Okay, we're going to know each other until we're actually dead." However, when his character's death came in Season 5, Hurst begged the show's creator, Kurt Sutter, to keep him on the show.

"I couldn't stop crying. I tried to talk [Sutter] out of it." The actor recalled going through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. Even though there were only three other core cast members in the scene, the actor asked everyone to be there for his last scene, where he could look them in the eyes. Hurst had a hard time moving on. His co-star Charlie Hunnam revealed that Hurst reached out on a sleepless night. "In an act of desperation, he found himself online at 4 in the morning," Hunnam recalled. "He said there were a thousand books to help actors with character development but not one on how to kill the f***er when you're done." They eventually gathered all the main cast and cut Hurst's beard as a final farewell.

Though "Remember the Titans" took place decades in the past, many of the issues depicted in it are still happening in real life. Wood Harris, who played Julius Campbell in the movie, experienced discrimination while working on the film. In an interview with GQ Magazine, Ryan Hurst and Harris recalled a meeting around the time of filming in which they were treated differently by an unnamed white woman. "[Harris] said, 'Just watch how she treats you, watch how she treats me,'" Hurst recalled. "We went in there, I sat down, and I was talking with her, and she was on her elbows leaning closer to me. Then Wood walked over and she moved her hair back a little, leaned back, crossed her legs, crossed her arms, and Wood looked over at me and nodded at me."

Harris reflected on the encounter and the reality he faces as a Black man. "I don't have the advantage of just being able to think about the necessity," he said. "We belong to a criminalized culture — it's perceived as criminal before we show up. It comes from 100 years of ideological placement." The meeting was only the tip of the iceberg. Harris stressed that terms like "racism" and "protest" have slowly lost their meanings over the years, and even peaceful protests were portrayed as violent and dangerous, which reflects a much bigger issue. "It's almost like there's a culture that doesn't see the house on fire."

Ethan Suplee is completely unrecognizable from his time playing Louie in "Remember the Titans." The actor weighed more than 500 pounds in his 20s due to food addiction and substance misuse before starting his weight loss journey while appearing on "My Name Is Earl." Acting and drugs used to be ways for him to find comfort. "Drugs were very, very helpful ... literally moments of acting and portraying a character that's supposed to be overweight would make me feel better," he told Verywell Mind. For a long time, Suplee was deeply dissatisfied with himself. Food and drugs offered him temporary escape but also made the problem worse. "[I]t's like my feelings of dissatisfaction with myself and my angst and all of it was wrapped up in my weight. So, I was waiting for the day that I got to the ideal weight, [I thought] all that stuff [would] go away." 

The first thing he had to do was to get his substance misuse under control. He had been in and out of rehab until 2002. He was "making a fortune" as a TV actor and had successfully shaken off 200 pounds by 2011. Yet, all the terrible feelings that he had toward himself persisted. "None of it went away at all." Finding happiness and fulfillment in life was a separate journey that required a shift in perspective, which the actor did over time and with a lot of effort.

Hayden Panettiere was a child when she played Sheryl in "Remember the Titans." She has since starred in a number of other films, including "Scream 4" and "Scream VI." In 2023, grief shook her to the core when she lost her younger brother Jansen, then 28, of an undiagnosed heart condition. "I just ballooned out," the actor told People. She gained 40 pounds in a very short amount of time. "It didn't matter what I did, what I ate. I know stress and cortisol running through your body can do that." It was almost like her body was in defense of the sudden loss. "I think my body was protecting itself, shielding itself from the world." 

She was beyond heartbroken. It was as if a part of her had gone with him. "I felt like I lost half of my soul," the actor said. During that time, paparazzi took pictures of her attending the funeral, and seeing those pictures of herself online triggered her agoraphobia, an anxiety disorder that led to fear and avoidance of certain situations and places. For a long time, Panettiere struggled with the thought of going outside. "I didn't recognize myself ... I didn't feel confident to put on clothes and get out of the house." Though she eventually overcame her agoraphobia, she was never the same. "No matter how many years go by, I will never get over his loss."

Donald Faison's Patey Jones in "Remember the Titans" was one of the few times the actor played a character with hair. The beloved actor is known for his signature bald look on the long-running medical comedy series, "Scrubs." He also shaved his head for the 1995 classic teen movie "Clueless." However, the untold truth behind Faison's iconic look is his real-life struggle with hair loss and baldness. The actor explained this in his podcast, "Fake Doctors, Real Friends"  with his "Scrubs" co-star and real-life friend, Zach Braff. "They shaved my head in 'Clueless' because my hair was receding at 18," Faison said (via ET). Baldness, or hair loss, affects half of the male population under the age of 50, and like Faison, 25% of them start seeing signs of it before age 21. 

"I shave my head so I don't look like I'm balding," he told The Cut in 2016. "The trick is to cut it off before anybody sees it's falling off." While he intended to hide the visible change of his hair loss, the actor has been vocal about his struggle. He shared an Instagram post of himself holding a razor in 2016 and wrote, "To my balding headed people... the struggle is real!!!" In 2024, he shared a childhood picture of himself with lush short hair on Instagram and sorely expressed his loss in the caption: "I miss that soft beautiful hair!! And hairline!!" 

Kate Bosworth was only 16 when she starred in "Remember the Titans" as Emma Hoyt. Her big break came in 2002 when she joined the cast of "Blue Crush." However, despite the stunning transformation Kate Bosworth had gone through, scrutiny nearly crashed her back in the 2000s. "When you take a small town kid ... and then all of sudden there's this intense amount of scrutiny and criticism and ... it's so heartbreaking," she said in an episode of InStyle's "Ladies First With Laura Brown" podcast (via People). "I felt like I wanted to disappear, I really did." Bosworth recalled getting scripts for stereotypical blond girl roles. "If you remember the early 2000s, they could be pretty cruel for young girls, so I was feeling a little dejected," she told Vulture. 

The lowest lows came after her breakout. Fame brought another level of criticism into her life, and because she was famous, there was also an overall lack of sympathy toward her. "I was losing a lot of weight because I was really under a lot of scrutiny, and I was so stressed and spun out that if you see images of me then, it's like seeing someone under duress." She recalled being alone and helpless in that situation, not knowing how to communicate her struggles to friends and family. "I think that a lot of times people in the spotlight get this sort of thing, like, 'Well, that's what you chose, and that's what it is.'"

After playing Carol Boone in "Remember the Titans," Nicole Ari Parker starred in Showtime's "Soul Food" for four years, where she met her husband, actor Boris Kodjoe. The couple welcomed their first child, Sophie, in 2005. Sophie suffered from a birth defect known as spinal bifida, which means the baby's spine failed to close during pregnancy, resulting in nerve and bone damage. "We went from a fairy tale to the fast track," Parker told People as she recalled getting the news after Sophie was born. She wanted to know whether it was something that she did or didn't do that caused this, though it was completely random. "I've racked my brain, been to therapy, cried my eyes out with guilt."

Sophie had to undergo surgery to separate her spinal cord from a mass. The surgery was a success, but it wasn't until the couple welcomed their second child, Nicolas Neruada, that Parker realized that all the terror and fear were taking a toll on her. "I suffered from postpartum [depression] pretty bad with Nicolas, but because the anxiety level of protecting Sophie was so strong, [it was like] postpartum covered with super-mom-ness." She wanted to stay strong for her daughter, even though it was wrecking her. "I couldn't afford to cry. There was no way." In 2006, Sophie developed a neurogenic bladder, a common complication of spinal bifida. The couple sought alternative medicine as long-term treatment, and she eventually grew up well and happy.

By the time Will Patton appeared as Coach Bill Yoast in "Remember the Titans," the actor had done more than 30 films, including playing Chick in the 1998 action drama "Armageddon."  Though Patton is a well-known face in the industry whose on-screen debut dates back to 1979, the actor generally keeps details about his life to himself and rarely gives lengthy interviews due to his shyness. "In a way, I feel completely frightened of dealing with other human beings at all, yet here I am, sticking my face in front of a movie camera all the time," he told The New York Times. He felt so uncomfortable that he avoided the spotlight while promoting "Armageddon."

Some people went into acting for passion. Others for fame. For Patton, acting was the only place he could connect with another human being. "From an early age, I couldn't communicate with anybody unless I was onstage," he told Garden & Gun. "Some people have almost a kind of sickness, which leads them to health by acting. Mine came out of shyness." To pursue an acting career, in which his shyness wouldn't get in the way of basic human contact, the then-19-year-old aspiring actor picked up odd and dangerous jobs on his way to New York, including once cleaning oil spills on the Mississippi River. "As the boss was leaving in his motorboat, he says, 'Oh, by the way, if you fall in, you'll be sucked right under.'"

Greg Alan Williams, who played Coach Paul "Doc" Hines in "Remember the Titans," is no stranger to getting into the heads of his characters. Usually, his ability to see through his characters' eyes comes as a strength, but it backfired when he was tasked with playing Robert "Mac" McCready, a pedophile, on drama series "Greenleaf." The experience of getting into  Mac's head made him deeply uncomfortable. "The moments you're portraying this guy, you know, you have to think like this guy. When he sees a victim, I have to see and think about that other human being in that way, and that's not comfortable. And it's not fun," he broke down in tears, opening up about the experience on Oprah. 

After playing Mac, he had a hard time looking at himself. "Very often, the fans wanna see [me] on the street, they want to take pictures, and you're trying to make sure you're not too close ... because, you know, you play Mac, and Mac is a creep, and you want to make sure that people understand that you're not a creep, and that's not fun."

To Williams, Mac wasn't just another TV villain. "This is a guy who really exists in the real world, in the lives of millions," the actor said. He was reminded of the sufferings and pain of real-life victims constantly while playing the character. While he's thankful for the opportunity, it wasn't a role he would likely play again.