Michael Weatherly has been an actor for over three decades and a dad to three children for almost the same amount of time; the NCIS star is dad to son August, 29, whom he welcomed in 1996 with ex-wife Amelie Heinlie, and son and daughter Liam, 11, and Olivia, 13, with wife Bojana Jankovic. However, he has now acknowledged that his dedication to work left him burned out and not feeling close to his children.
“One of the things that makes me happiest is how close I am with my kids now,” he tells HELLO! in our brand new digital cover with the CBS star. “I see how much my daughter loves dancing, and my son loves playing soccer. They will spend hours a day putting themselves through the meat grinder of rehearsal and training, but I love that they do it with a smile and with gratitude. They’re in flow, it’s a really beautiful place to get to in life.”
Michael found fame in the ABC soap opera Loving in the mid-1990s and went on to star in the spin-off The City. During that time, he met and fell in love with co-star Amelia Heinle; they married in 1995 and welcomed their son in January 1996, but split a year later. Amelia lived in New York City, but Michael’s career took him to Los Angeles and in 2000, he joined Jessica Alba in Dark Angel for three seasons. During that time, the two stars were engaged before splitting in 2003.
When Dark Angel was canceled, he jumped immediately into NCIS, and after six years, he married Serbian-Canadian Dr. Bojana Janković on September 30, 2009; they went on to welcome two children. Michael appeared on the CBS show for 13 seasons before leaving in 2016 and taking on the titular character Bull in the legal drama. That show ran for six years, and it was in 2022, when Michael realized he was “exhausted”, that he took a step back.
“I took a few years off because I had burned myself into a bit of a puddle. I was directing and acting, I did 125 episodes of Bull, I started seeing the writing on the wall, and I said, ‘This is exhausting.’ I wasn’t connecting with the character in a way that felt like I was in flow, so I took time off,” he said.
Michael, who returns to TV on September 4, 2025, with NCIS: Tony & Ziva, continued: “My wife and I have this conversation all the time. It’s very difficult to take time and look at yourself. You have to go through the bottom of yourself, and I was able to get there – I did a lot of therapy, a lot of reckoning and examination of different things.”
© Jason Bell/Paramount+During the last three years, Michael, who was one of six, also grieved the deaths of his brother and father; his sister died years prior when he “was so busy making television that I didn’t find out for three days”.
“It’s very interesting how many people moved on to the next plane over the last few years, and that brought an urgency back into my world,” he said.
© InstagramMichael and his family now live in Connecticut, but for much of his eldest son’s childhood, they were on opposite coasts and in 2017, Michael acknowledged that it was “a very difficult time”.
“I was 27 and could barely take care of myself, but I had to feed people and put a roof over their heads. It’s a tough thing for a kid, especially when one of your parents is on the other side of the country.”
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