Sir Anthony Hopkins knew he needed to get help for his drinking when he realised he “could have killed” someone while driving during a “blackout”.
Sir Anthony Hopkins knew he needed to get help for his drinking when he realised he “could have killed” someone.
The 87-year-old actor – who celebrated 49 years sober last December – was driving around California while in a “blackout” and had a sudden moment of awareness that he was an alcoholic and needed to quit the bottle.
He told The New York Times’ The Interview podcast: “I was drunk and driving my car here in California in a blackout, no clue where I was going, when I realised that I could have killed somebody — or myself, which I didn’t care about.
“I came to my senses and said to an ex-agent of mine at this party in Beverly Hills, ‘I need help.’ ”
The Silence of the Lambs actor had a “spooky” moment where he heard a “vocal, male, reasonable, like a radio voice” speak to him from the inside, and he instantly lost his desire to drink.
He continued: “It was 11 o’clock precisely — I looked at my watch — and this is the spooky part: Some deep, powerful thought or voice spoke to me from inside and said: ‘It’s all over. Now you can start living. And it has all been for a purpose, so don’t forget one moment of it.’
“The craving to drink was taken from me, or left. Now I don’t have any theories except divinity or that power that we all possess inside us that creates us from birth, life force, whatever it is.
“It’s a consciousness, I believe. That’s all I know.”
The Academy Award-winning star had gone through a “lonely” childhood and was bullied so turned to alcohol to “nullify that discomfort or whatever it was in me, because it made me feel big.”
He added: “You know, booze is terrific because it makes you instantly feel in a different space.
“Actors in those days — Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton, all of them — I remember those drinking sessions, thinking: ‘This is the life. We’re rebels, we’re outsiders, we can celebrate.’ And at the back of the mind is: ‘It’ll kill you as well.’ “
Anthony feels grateful that he is “still here”.
He said: “Those guys I worked with have all gone…
“There are monstrous difficulties in life and you take notice of them. But finally, approaching 88 years of age, I wake up in the morning going: ‘I’m still here. How?’
“I don’t know. But whatever’s keeping me here, thank you very much! Much obliged!”
‘I could have killed someone’: Sir Anthony Hopkins recalls realising he was an alcoholic
