CSI: Crime Scene Investigation icon William Petersen resurfaced in Los Angeles recently – five years after quitting Hollywood for good.
Petersen, now 72, is most famed for his role as the quirky, fastidious and knowledgeable CSI graveyard shift supervisor Gil Grissom on the hit show – but looked worlds away from the character as he stepped out.
The Golden Globe nominee, who now lives in Chicago with his second wife Gina Cirone and their twins, kept a low profile in a baseball cap and sporting a bushy beard.
His look was casual in a black shirt and sweats as he returned to California – months after dishing on his decision to end his acting career for good.
Petersen is most identified with his lead role on CSI which he began starring on in 2000.
He played Grissom for the show’s first nine seasons, and later returned several times throughout later seasons, including for the finale TV movie Immortality in 2015.
CSI star William Petersen looks unrecognizable five years after retiring from Hollywood… see him now at 72
Petersen, now 72, is most famed for his role as the quirky, fastidious and knowledgeable CSI graveyard shift supervisor Gil Grissom on the hit show – pictured with Marg Helgenberger as Catherine Willows
Although the series featured plenty of traditional police work, it also showed the investigators using their brains and science to help solve crimes through their detailed physical investigations.
Petersen initially rose to fame with lead roles in the crime classics To Live And Die In L.A. (1985) and Manhunter (1986) the first film to feature the character Hannibal Lecter.
Although he committed to television with the CSI franchise in the past two decades, he still appeared sporadically in films, with his most recent role being in The Old Country in 2021.
He returned once more to the CSI franchise in 2021 in revival, CSI: Vegas.
Petersen had to be taken to a hospital via ambulance after he fell ill on the set in 2021.
A representative for Petersen said he was on the show’s Los Angeles set when he started feeling under the weather.
His representative attributed the health scare to ‘overexertion or exhaustion,’ as he’s been working for the past 12 weeks on his series, and film and television crews tend to work long hours.
Speaking with People at a 40th anniversary screening of his breakout Hollywood film, To Live and Die in LA, at Beyond Fest in September, Petersen revealed he had accomplished all he wanted to as an actor.
Although the series featured plenty of traditional police work, it also showed the investigators using their brains and science to help solve crimes through their detailed physical investigations
The Golden Globe nominee, who now lives in Chicago with his second wife Gina Cirone and their twins, kept a low profile in a baseball cap and sporting a bushy beard
His look was casual in a black shirt and sweats as he returned to California – months after dishing on his decision to end his acting career for good
Speaking with People at a 40th anniversary screening of his breakout Hollywood film, To Live and Die in LA, at Beyond Fest in September, Petersen revealed he had accomplished all he wanted to as an actor
He played Grissom for the show’s first nine seasons, and later returned several times throughout later seasons, including for the finale TV movie Immortality in 2015
The star is pictured during CSI’s first season in 2000 with Paul Guilfoyle, Helgenberger, Jorja Fox, Gary Dourdan and George Eads
The star got into character in 2009 as he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
He said, ‘I have an agent now that hasn’t done anything in 15 years, the poor guy. Because I’m like, “No – I’m not doing anything. I’m not going to do it.”‘
‘I don’t really want to do anything!” he laughs. “Because at a certain point you realize…I’ve done 40 plays or whatever, I’ve done movies, I’ve done television. I managed to participate in all three mediums, in terms of what you can do as an actor.’
‘For me, it’s just been a lark, really. It’s been fun. Because I never cared whether I got something or didn’t get something, because none of it was planned. It’s one of those things where if you don’t have great expectations, you don’t have disappointments.’
The star is pictured with wife Gina Cirone in 2009
Petersen initially rose to fame with lead roles in the crime classics To Live And Die In L.A. (1985)
He stared in Manhunter (1986) the first film to feature the character Hannibal Lecter – pictured with Kim Griest
Petersen, who shares a daughter Maite, 51, with his first wife and 14-year-old twins with Cirone said, ‘I’ve still got kids, and I’ve got grandkids older than my younger kids.
‘And it’s kind of getting ready: a lot of my friends are older, and a lot of my family has gotten older.
‘So it’s kind of monitoring the end of lives around me, and I’m kind of just in that thing. I just don’t have the ego to go get in front of cameras anymore.’
Petersen had also maintained a stable presence in live theater as a member of the prestigious Chicago-based Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and he co-founded the Remains Theater Ensemble.
