Stephen Dorff returned to the small screen — and the police badge — this week as interim sheriff Bill Hollister on Fox’s “Deputy.” But as he recently told People, it wasn’t long ago that he thought he’d never act again. “Two years ago, I was pretty much going to stop acting because I was just bored and not liking the parts I was getting. I lost my little brother and I was pretty much done,” he recalls in a new interview. Nashville-based songwriter Andrew Dorff died of unknown causes in December 2016 while vacationing in Turks and Caicos. The following year, Stephen told Larry King only that, “there was some drinking involved, there was a Jacuzzi involved and there was water involved.” Speaking to People about the loss, Stephen, 46, says: “I still miss him every day and I don’t understand why certain things happen but life is hard. I was very lucky growing up, I had an amazing family. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been punched in the gut a few times after losing a few members of my family. If anything, we grow and learn. I put it into my work.” His perspective became more positive when he was cast in “True Detective” alongside Mahershala Ali for the show’s third season. “That changed everything because I went from not wanting to do anything to having a lot of options and a lot of interesting opportunities come my way,” he says. “It was exactly what I needed.”
