Decades before he became one of television’s most recognizable sitcom actors, Tim Allen grappled with loss, a prison sentence and questions about God.
Ahead of the release of “Toy Story 5,” Allen reflected on how those experiences turned him toward God, and shaped his faith.
Days before Thanksgiving 1964, Allen’s father, real estate agent Gerald M. Dick, was driving his family home from a Colorado football game when a drunk driver veered across the interstate, broke through the median and crashed into the family’s car, killing the 40-year-old father.
In the wake of the accident that claimed his father’s life, Allen said he “turned into a different person,” he told Us Weekly.
“Trauma has that effect. I turned into my spiritual or metaphysical or religious self,” Allen said. “My blood father was really involved in pruning the car (and) all the stuff I really like now. My dad got me into that. I really missed that connection. I didn’t have that with my stepfather, but he was an extremely wonderful guy.”
During his college years, Allen’s life took a second difficult turn, when he was arrested in 1978 at the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport in Michigan, carrying more than a pound of cocaine in his luggage. He pleaded guilty to the charges and spent over two years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sandstone, Minnesota.
While incarcerated, Allen began studying the lives of successful people and thinking seriously about the future he wanted to build.
“I started focusing on where I wanted to be. I did not want to do that ever again,” Allen said. “I humiliated my family and friends and myself. I did not want to make that mistake (again).”
After being released from prison, Allen returned to Western Michigan University to finish college. He also started doing stand-up at a Detroit comedy club — an effort that blossomed into a successful career in comedy.
He went on to star in eight seasons of ABC’s “Home Improvement,” followed by the film franchises “The Santa Clause” and “Toy Story.”
In the decades since the sudden death of his father, faith has played a role in Allen’s life. He described his relationship with faith as being “a questioner most of my life.”
“It’s been a long path to learn (how to) accept things as they are,” Allen said. “If I look back at the horrible things that have happened to me or to others, am I supposed to be OK with that? Or is it none of my business?”
“For a long time, I still enjoyed church services now and then, but underneath, I was going, ‘I don’t like this Creator because you can take anybody any time you want for no reason,’” he added. “I’ve learned to stop asking.”
In a previous conversation about his faith, Allen said he had come to adopt a greater sense of divine intervention, and much of his earlier cynicism had faded. His experiences, including the death of his father and his time in prison, have informed his faith.
“Whoever built me, this is too much, too weird that it happened by accident,” he said in a 2011 interview. “It didn’t happen by accident.”