Tony Danza's skiing accident last winter nearly convinced him to give up the slopes - and his home in Utah.
"I was thinking of selling the house, of not skiing anymore," Danza said during the current Television Critics Association press tour.But some time he recently spent back in Deer Valley convinced him otherwise.
"I went to see where I got hurt . . . and then I started to ski, and I spent two and a half weeks up there and refell in love with my house, refell in love with the sport, refell in love with the area," Danza said.
The accident, on Dec. 28, 1992, left the actor with a broken back and numerous other injuries.
"Well, I do a bad joke," he said. "You wake up on a respirator. You look up, your wife's crying. You say, `Gee, need a second opinion.' "
Danza said the toughest part about skiing again wasn't the skiing but the people. He feared he'd be in for a good deal of ribbing about his accident - and he was at least partially correct.
"I skiied down to the lodge to get my pass and the girl immediately asked me if I was staying on the bunny slope. Ha, ha," he said with a good deal of annoyance. "So I felt it was going to be a long week.
"But it wasn't. People were really very nice. And I think they were shocked to see me back."
According to Leonard Hill, the executive producer of an upcoming TV movie in which Danza stars, the accident "was a legend in Utah."
"It was not just a ski accident. It was a major wipe-out," Hill said, adding that he learned how major when he went skiing at Deer Valley a couple of weeks later himself.
"They introduced into the lexicon of Deer Valley a term that's now a verb . . . to Danza," Hill said. "And people will come up the mountain saying, "Boy, I Danza'd going down Rattler."
More than a year after the accident, Danza still isn't completely recovered, but he's close.
"I made a pretty good recovery and I'm just about 100 percent," he said. "I'm continuing to train . . . but I'm doing pretty well."