So did the events that led him to go public. During the filming of “Canvas,” he learned that a close friend committed suicide -- two days after they’d made plans to spend Thanksgiving together with their families. All the while, Harden’s portrayal of someone with schizophrenia rang familiar to him -- it reminded Pantoliano, he'd later realize, of his own mother.

"When the film was over, you know, I realized that I was going through some stuff,” he said. “I was at that point leading a double life and was able to get through the day through pain medication as a result of falling off my roof a year earlier."

He shook the pain meds after he went in for a physical and his doctor suggested that he see a psychiatrist, who gave him an antidepressant prescription. But when Pantoliano was booking another film, and taking the standard physical at the outset of it, he was alarmed to discover that the studio would insure him for his high cholesterol but would only work with him if he signed a waiver to assume all financial responsibility if the antidepressant he was taking failed and he caused a work stoppage due to a nervous breakdown.