"The Wrestler" Scott Siegel in New York Daily News Story!

[huge285]

Scott Siegel was all the rage in 'The Wrestler,' but real steroid story serves as cautionary tale

BY Michael O'Keeffe and Nathaniel Vinton
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS
Saturday, May 8th 2010, 2:33 PM

Budding actor Scott Siegel won raves from Rourke for his role as a steroid dealer in 'The Wrestler.' Siegel drew from his own experience as steroid user and dealer.



Scott Siegel, shown during bodybuilding competition in 2005, started using steroids in high school to overcome his insecurities about his body.





The swift unraveling of actor Scott Siegel's life began on Feb. 18, 2009, when the movie "The Wrestler" was still in theaters. Siegel played a steroid dealer in the award-winning film, a small but important role that earned him kudos from Mickey Rourke and audition offers from Hollywood power brokers.



But his career was derailed that winter night when Siegel walked up to a Honda Civic parked suspiciously outside his parents' house in Eastchester. The car had the darkest tinted windows he had ever seen - so dark that he had to cup his hands around his eyes and press his face against the glass to look inside.


What he saw, looking straight back at him, was another pair of eyes. Siegel jumped back from the car, cursing. No one got out of the car. Siegel walked around the vehicle, and then walked away, having figured out that he was under police surveillance.


In the Honda were law-enforcement officers with the Drug Enforcement Administration's Westchester County Task Force. They had been watching Siegel for years, since almost immediately after his release from a 2 1/2 year prison stint for selling Ecstasy. The agents suspected he had been supplementing his acting income by dealing steroids. In fact, the 285-pound Siegel had been using anabolics his entire adult life, starting as a 15-year-old kid with body-image insecurities, all the way up through his career as an actor in commercials, television shows and movies.
Today, Siegel, 35, sits in a cell in the Westchester County Jail in Valhalla, awaiting relocation to a federal penitentiary. Last year, he pleaded guilty to a drug charge and two counts of assaulting, impeding and interfering with officers in the performance of their official duties. Last month, he was sentenced to 63 months in prison.


It's a steep fall for a self-described nice boy from the suburbs who just months before the incident was attending film festivals and hanging out with Rourke and Marissa Tomei.


It's also a testament to the seductive - and destructive - power of performance-enhancing drugs.


"I'm a Jewish kid who grew up in Eastchester," says Siegel as he sits in a tiny jail visiting room, as perspiration beads on his shaved head and stains his orange prison V-neck shirt. "I don't fit the normal criteria. A lot of times I sit in my cell and say, 'Why am I here?' "


In his first interview since his arrest 15 months ago, Siegel repeatedly expressed regrets about his role in the steroid trade, about the pain his arrest has caused his parents and family, and the damage the drugs have done to his health. But he also talked about how steroids turned an insecure teen into a confident and ripped specimen who turned heads and commanded respect wherever he went.


"Working out on steroids, and working out naturally are like two totally different worlds," Siegel says nostalgically. "I don't care if you worked out 10 years without these drugs, you make gains in three to four weeks that you couldn't make in 10 years. You just get hooked.


"It's a great feeling," he adds. "People kiss your a-- because you are big. I was a nobody, and then I was a somebody."


The officers in the Honda didn't arrest Siegel right away, but a few hours later the DEA agents executed warrants on Siegel's apartment in New Rochelle and his parents' house in Eastchester, seizing about 28,000 tablets of anabolic steroids and about 1,450 bottles of steroids in liquid form. They also found about $70,000 in cash, some IDs that didn't belong to Siegel and drug ledgers that reflected the sale of more than $100,000 in steroids.


The federal sentencing guidelines for steroid distribution are relatively lenient, compared to other controlled substances. Even though Siegel had the previous drug charge on his record - he was working as a bouncer at Manhattan nightclubs when he was arrested in 1998 for his participation in an Ecstasy ring - he might have avoided a lengthy sentence if it weren't for his decision to run when the cops finally emerged from their surveillance vehicle to arrest him.
But run he did, plowing his Cadillac Escalade through a fence and leading cops on a wild, 35-minute chase that involved more than two dozen police officers from all over Westchester County. Siegel rammed into their cars and dodged their bullets, suffering from what he now says was a panic attack stemming from a disorder he has suffered from since childhood.
It was not, he insists, 'roid rage.


"I kept thinking, 'I gotta get away, I gotta get to my lawyer, I'll turn myself in tomorrow,'" Siegel says. "I had been arrested before and it was very traumatic. I panicked and went into fight-or-flight mode."
At one point, Siegel abandoned his car and hid in the snowy woods, where he called an employee of the tanning salon he owned and demanded she pick him up. When a police officer spotted him getting into her car and pursued, Siegel jumped out and ran on foot. This time, a police officer's vehicle ran into him. Siegel's massive body flew up over the hood of the car and down onto the pavement.


"Even after Siegel ran into the street abruptly and collided with one of the police cars that was following him, Siegel continued his aggressive behavior," a federal prosecutor wrote in a pre-sentencing memo.

Siegel says he stopped resisting arrest once he hit the pavement, but this much is undisputed: Siegel has not used steroids since that night. His crash landing is all the more painful since he's going through steroid withdrawal. Twenty years of hard-core use has all but destroyed his body's natural ability to produce testosterone (Jose Canseco has suffered the same fate) leaving him even more susceptible to depression than the typical prison inmate.


"My body just shut down the first eight months I was here," Siegel says. "All I did was sleep. My energy level's in the toilet. I was severely depressed. If you want to talk about side effects, those are serious side effects."


Siegel is still enormous. He towered over guards and other inmates as he entered the jail's visiting room last week. But like that insecure 15-year-old who used to lock himself in his suburban bedroom, he once again loathes his body. He's lost muscle tone, he says. His skin is pasty from lack of exposure to sunlight - a horrible turn of events for a man who still owns a Westchester tanning salon.


Born in American suburbia in 1974, Siegel was of a generation that grew up consuming films of bulging superheroes and action movie stars, and part of him wanted to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Superman and the Incredible Hulk. Unlike other boys his age, he wasn't into sports or beer or marijuana. As a 15-year-old at Eastchester High, he was a loner with few friends and lots of insecurities.


Siegel says he suffers from muscle dysmorphia, a psychological disorder in which the sufferer believes their muscles are undeveloped, no matter what the reality is. It is a sort of reverse anorexia.
"How I dealt with that, I started working out, started getting into weights. I had a friend of mine, that I used to work out with - he was older than me - we worked out every day," Siegel says. "He kept getting stronger and bigger. I was like, 'Wow.'"


The friend soon shared the secrets of his success in the gym.
"I think the first thing I took was methyl-testosterone," Siegel says. "From there I went to Sustanon, which was from Mexico. They used to come in these pre-loaded glass syringes. These things were like harpoons, they were so big. I was scared of needles, but after a while you get used to them."


For long stretches of his life, Siegel injected up to 2,000 milligrams of steroids per week. As he built a tolerance to one type of testosterone, he switched to another, cypionate to ethanate to propionate - injecting into his rear end, shoulders, quads, biceps and triceps.

"There's not a steroid out there that I have not done," he says, rattling off a list that includes Sustanon, Durotestin, Deca-Durabolin, Primobolan, Dianabol, Anadrol, Anavar, Winstrol and other all-stars of the anti-doping banned substance list.


The drugs, he says, worked like magic. He went from a lean, anti-social freshman to an outgoing, confident young man headed for Iona College weighing 225 pounds.


By the time he graduated from high school, Siegel had no trouble finding work as a bouncer as a gig on the side as he started classes at Iona. He also worked at his father's surgical supply company, until that business got shut down following a Medicare fraud investigation. Siegel had expected to take over the family business. With his future up in the air, he felt lost and dropped out of school.


But thanks to his nightclub connections, Siegel wasn't out of a job. In addition to his job as a bouncer, he started selling steroids and Ecstasy until his arrest in 1998. His acting career started to take off after his release. He filmed a Hasbro commercial, and scenes for "The Sopranos" and "Rescue Me" that were ultimately cut. One day he was hanging out in a Miami club when director Darren Aronofsky spotted him and said he'd like put him in "The Wrestler."


Aronofsky advised him to look to the gun dealer in "Taxi Driver" for inspiration.


Siegel thought his character's lines didn't ring true - nobody who used steroids talked like that guy - and he wrote his part with Rourke on a napkin as they dined together one night. Rourke later praised Siegel on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."
"I wanted him to have the whole scene," Rourke said. "I just turned my back and let him go. I said, 'You're the only dude that ever stole a scene from me.'"


Siegel says Rourke contacted him after his arrest to offer support, and he hopes to revive his acting career when he is released. He also wants to find an agent that will help him write a book about his experiences.
Siegel says he especially wants to get involved with programs that educate young people about the dangers of steroids. He wants to spend the next five years reflecting on his past and preparing for a future as somebody who has something to contribute to society.


"You get knocked down in life, it's how you get up that counts," Siegel says. "We'll see how it goes after this. Right now I'm known for being a drug dealer who played a drug dealer in a movie, who tried to run over police officers. It's not what I want to be known for."

[yeahbuddy]

So 20 years of use and the only major problem that has ever occurred is because these substances are illegal. Hmmm

A side note: "...seizing about 28,000 tablets of anabolic steroids and about 1,450 bottles of steroids in liquid form" --Holy crap that is a lot of gear!!!

[BigJD69]

I heard from a close friend of his that he was selling $50,000 a month!

[Jer]

That was a good article.

It could certainly have been the typical anti-steroid peice, but they didn't take too many stabs at him and just wrote about his situation.

[Warped]

Good read. Talk about a brutal "pct"!

[JackedQuads]

I wonder what his weight/bodyfat is now, how much he lost, etc.

[rinse]

Good article.

And now he's gonna tell the kids about the dangers of steriods.... Why do everyone(ok not everyone but a lot) turn "side" after they get busted. 20 years on the stuff and now he wants be anti steriods because he got caught.

[coaltrain]

Good article.

And now he's gonna tell the kids about the dangers of steriods.... Why do everyone(ok not everyone but a lot) turn "side" after they get busted. 20 years on the stuff and now he wants be anti steriods because he got caught.

You say the shit people wanna hear so you can get your ass out of jail asap. At least I hope that is what he's doing.

[Triple-H_2005]

^
This.

[friendsthoughitall]

as the reporter said in the article he is still bigger than anyone in the room. and as i said before hes still bigger than most....pretty hard to diet in jail...and as far as him being anti anything your miss understanding were hes coming from hes just telling his story!!!!!!!!!!lets put it this way once your a true bodybuilder your always gonna be a bodybuilder at heart ....ARNOLD was a bodybuilder, then a actor,now govnor, we dont hate on him for changing his veiws.....and to think hes saying things to get out of jail asap.....thats the best one yet he is a sentenced inmate ...do you think the feds are idots ???????? they not..... you can say anything you want at this point and it can be coming out of a mouth riddled with cancer the only way someone gets out of jail after being sentenced A.S.A.P.is if you die there .so once again lets try to be open minded hes just a guy telling his story....AND YES HE IS SAYING KIDS SHOULD NEVER DO DRUGS AND YES HE WILL SPEAK TO THEM ABOUT THE DANGERS AND I HOPE THATS SOMETHING WE ALL AGREE ON ....THEY NEED TO HEAR IT FROM SOMEONE !!!!!!!! how does anyone knock a guy that wants to share his experince with KIDS.....they have x drug addicts going to the schools all time sharing there stories .....trying to inform the kids is a good thing !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[DECABEATZ]

i heard from a close friend of his that he was selling $50,000 a month!

lol when i saw the wrestler i knew 2 guys in that movie siegler and paul e normous! I had no idea siegelers part but i talked to paul on a weekly basis and knew his part when i saw siegelers part i was like how about that for real life portrale.

[DECABEATZ]

you say the shit people wanna hear so you can get your ass out of jail asap. At least i hope that is what he's doing.

you get 2 months good time for every year sentenced! Figure it out! Take classes offered upstate and looks better for your first hearing and stay out of trouble!