Balthazar Getty on Growing Up Getty and Movies About His Father’s Kidnapping: “I Don’t Watch That Crap”

Balthazar Getty is best known for roles in films like 1990’s Lord of the Flies (his breakout at age 15), the 1997 David Lynch mind-bender Lost Highway and ABC’s Brothers & Sisters, where he played Tommy Walker, scion of a wealthy American family, for six seasons.

But Getty, 46, is also notable for being the scion of a much wealthier American family: the Gettys, namesakes of Los Angeles’ famed Getty Center. His great-grandfather is J. Paul Getty, founder of the Getty Oil Company, who following his death in 1976 left behind a $6 billion fortune, or $27 billion adjusted for inflation.

J. Paul had five sons with four wives, resulting in dozens of descendants. Balthazar’s father was the grandson J. Paul Getty III, who while living in Rome in 1973 was kidnapped by the ‘Ndrangheta, or Italian mafia. He was just 16. (The ordeal was dramatized in Ridley Scott’s 2017 crime thriller All the Money in the World, starring the late Christopher Plummer as J. Paul Getty.)

The kidnappers demanded $17 million for his return, which his grandfather refused to pay, citing concern that it could lead to other family kidnappings. As their demands went unheeded, the captors raised the stakes, first playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun pointed at his head; then, later, severing his ear and mailing it to an Italian newspaper along with a demand for $3.2 million. (The letter read, “This is Paul’s first ear. If within ten days the family still believes that this is a joke mounted by him, then the other ear will arrive. In other words, he will arrive in little bits.”)

After J. Paul Getty III developed a severe infection and was being plied with brandy to numb the pain, his grandfather agreed to pay $2.2 million and Balthazar’s father was returned — psychologically scarred and in failing health. Later that same year, at age 18, he married Balthazar’s mother, the German-born Gisele Martine Zacher, who was already four months pregnant with Balthazar.

J. Paul Getty III never recovered; he developed a serious alcohol and prescription drug addiction. In 1981, he swallowed a cocktail of Valium, methadone and alcohol, resulting in a stroke that left him quadriplegic, partially blind and unable to speak. He died in 2011 at age 54.

That was not the only sensational tragedy to befall the Gettys. Balthazar’s second cousins, brothers Andrew Getty and John Gilbert Getty, both met premature deaths — Andrew in 2015 at 47, of internal hemorrhaging partly attributed to drug use; and John Gilbert only last November, discovered at 52 in a hotel room in San Antonio, Texas.

He was, according to a police report, in “Indian-style sitting position on his bed in front of his laptop … glasses in his left hand, eyes were open, mouth was open.” The cause of death was later revealed to be cardiomyopathy and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, complicated by fentanyl toxicity, according to the Bexar County Medical Examiner.

Balthazar married fashion designer Rosetta Millington Getty in 2000 and the couple have four children together: Grace, Violet, June and, the eldest, son Cassius, born when Balthazar was 23. Getty has been passing the pandemic working on his first love, music, having recently collaborated on an EP with rapper Chino XL. (Getty directed the video for one track, “Ethiopia,” which features Terminator 2: Judgment Day star Robert Patrick.)

Getty spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about his larger-than-life family and his multifaceted career.

What’s it like being born into a storied American dynasty like the Gettys?

I grew up very contrary and very different to people’s perception. I was primarily raised by my mother, who still is a very spiritual seeker of knowledge and mysticism and was a Buddhist growing up. I went through the Waldorf school system, so we didn’t have toys, we didn’t have television. The first 13 years of my life were primarily in San Francisco with my mother and my sister.

What about your dad?

My dad in the early days was kind of in and out of my life. He would come and he would go. But I visited my father one summer — he’s in this bigger house out in Tarzana with a tennis court, all these things I had never seen — and I ended up staying with him. He put me in a prep school here and two months later I was discovered for Lord of the Flies.

Your dad is sadly famous for his kidnapping, which was depicted in the FX series Trust with Donald Sutherland and the film All the Money in the World starring Christopher Plummer.

Yeah, yeah.

You were born after that happened?

I was born about a year after all of that went down when they left Europe and they came back to America. My mom was pregnant with me as all that stuff was tapering down, so to speak. They were still in Italy at the time, and they came to America and ended up having me here. I was born in Los Angeles, actually.

Was a lot riding on you being a happy chapter to get past that terrible trauma?

I think they left Europe after having gone through hell and came to America to try to start a new life. That’s how I ended up here, because my mother’s German and my father was living in Rome. So, you’d expect I would be in Europe, but I think because of everything that happened, we came to L.A. and my early years were here and the Bay Area.

In terms of your grandfather and your great-grandfather, who is the one depicted in the film? It’s your great-grandfather, right?

Yeah, as the mean old guy or whatever.  I don’t watch that crap.  But yeah — that’s who they’re trying to portray, completely inaccurately.

Is it true he didn’t want to pay the ransom?

Not in that way. You have to imagine: if you have 12 grandkids and you give money to one situation and then suddenly all the kids are — those are movies, man. They take the little bits that they think are going to work — you need a good guy and a bad guy and yeah, so like those movies and the series and all that, like, as a family we just see those as completely inaccurate and wrong and sort of silly in a way.

You and your dad — what was that relationship like?

It was hard because my father suffered. My father and I had a great relationship, and he had a really tough life and I miss him very much.

You were discovered as the 1990s were kicking off. I imagine you were friends with all the legends of the era. Were you and River Phoenix close at all?

I wasn’t close with River. I had met him a few times. His brother [Joaquin Phoenix] is still one of my best friends because I was a little bit younger than that generation. Me and Joaquin are the same age.

Do the Gettys have big family gatherings?

We do. Once a year the family gets together and it’s a huge family. Yeah, the family gets together a lot. It’s a very close family.

Where do you convene?

Normally in Europe because most of the family is in Europe. Probably 70 to 80 percent of the family is in Europe.

I know you had a cousin who died in November.

Yeah, yeah.

I’m trying to figure out how you’re related.  Your grandfathers are brothers?

Exactly. He’s my second cousin. His father, Gordon Getty — who is still alive and he’s my Uncle Gordon, is an amazing man, a composer, a brilliant, brilliant man — it was his son. He was a musician, too. Beautiful man. He has a daughter, a beautiful daughter who I’m very close with, and you know, it’s just sad.  It’s death — we all go through it and it hurts.

You make music; you’ve done that for a while now, right?

It’s always been a part of my life.  I started DJing when I was 15 and started programming beats and playing the keyboard, making electronic music. I founded Purplehaus Records in 2013 and then opened Purplehaus Productions in the Fairfax and Melrose [district]. Not to compare myself in any way, but that’s my Warhol factory: We do fashion and art and content and music. We have a project called ’80s Crack Baby which is an animated mixed tape I did where I rap.

Do you ever get a hard time for being a rich white guy rapping?

I get a little bit of that, but you know, what’s cool is a lot of, a lot of the people in the culture know me and respect me and have co-signed it, so to speak.