Busey Gets Around to Apology

Tue., Mar. 18, 2008 10:21 AM PDT by Josh Grossberg

Gary Busey is apologizing for acting like 63 going on 13.

Nearly a month after his Oscar sideshow, when he crashed Ryan Seacrest's red carpet interview with Jennifer Garner and Laura Linney, the Lethal Weapon star has issued an official mea culpa to the E! News host and the two actresses for his bizarro behavior.

"I meant no disrespect to Ms. Jennifer Garner when I met her at the Oscars and apologize if I made her uncomfortable," Busey said in a statement released by his publicist, Christi Blicharski, soon after the awards show.

The eccentric thesp made headlines after inexplicably hugging a bewildered Garner, whom he had never met, and then kissing her on the neck. Garner told Seacrest the encounter left her feeling "a little nervous."

"I simply greeted both actresses with joy and open arms, which is the way I would greet anyone I'm happy to meet," Busey said of the gaffe. "Everyone has experienced a handshake or hug which has turned awkward, and this was no different."

The toothy actor was a little more sanguine about the incident immediately after the awards, phoning in to Seacrest's radio show to try to explain the too-close encounter.

"You are to me, when you're working, an innocent champion of honesty. Your heart has a way to embrace the truth in your delivery without looking like you are reading a script," he told Seacrest.

"Everything looks spontaneous. What spontaneity is—spontaneity comes from an invisible idea that is there before the creation began. And you have that naturally, so I just wanted to pay you a compliment. But I didn't know you were in the middle of an interview, I was just moving through there."

But Busey has been making a mini-career out of his oddball antics, sending up his weirdo persona in a recent stint on HBO's Entourage.

Busey scored an Oscar nomination for his pitch-perfect performance as Buddy Holly in 1978's The Buddy Holly Story. He played the baddie opposite Mel Gibson's crazy cop in the 1987 hit Lethal Weapon and also has had notable roles in Predator 2, Point Break, The Firm and Under Siege and Lost Highway before fading into B-movie obscurity in the 2000s.