In a candid new interview, Sir Anthony Hopkins has shared a powerful account of the night that transformed his life and set him on a nearly five-decade journey of sobriety, RadarOnline.com can report.
‘I Was Drunk’
Hopkins recalled driving drunk in California in a blackout.
Speaking on The New York Times podcast “The Interview” on Saturday, October 25, the Oscar-winning actor, 87, discussed his upcoming memoir We Did OK, Kid and recalled the exact moment he realized he was an alcoholic.
“I was drunk and driving my car here in California in a blackout, no clue where I was going, when I realized that I could have killed somebody — or myself, which I didn’t care about,” Hopkins said. “I came to my senses and said to an ex-agent of mine at this party in Beverly Hills, ‘I need help.'”
Drunk Driving
Hopkins told an ex-agent at a Beverly Hills party, “I need help.”
Hopkins remembered the experience vividly, describing a mysterious moment of clarity. “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.'”
He added that the voice — which he described as “vocal, male, reasonable, like a radio voice” — seemed to instantly lift his compulsion to drink.
“The craving to drink was taken from me, or left,” Hopkins said. “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.”
Hopkins’ Lonely Childhood
Hopkins admitted he had used alcohol to escape a lonely childhood.
Reflecting on his early years, Hopkins said he used alcohol to escape pain from a “lonely” childhood and to “nullify that discomfort.”
“You know, booze is terrific because it makes you instantly feel in a different space,” he explained. “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.’ Those guys I worked with have all gone.”
Hopkins’ Birthday
Many of his drinking peers, he noted sadly, are now gone.
Now approaching his 88th birthday, Hopkins says he feels grateful simply to wake up each morning. “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!”
Last December, Hopkins marked 49 years of sobriety, sharing on Instagram, “Forty-nine years ago today, I stopped… I phoned up a group of people like me — alcoholic. And that was it. Sober. I’ve had more fun these 49 years than ever.”
Hopkins’ memoir, We Did OK, Kid, will be released on November 4.
