Sir Anthony Hopkins worried that he had “killed somebody” during a drunk driving rampage in 1975, before finally sobering up and putting alcohol down for good, RadarOnline.com can report.
The Oscar-winning actor said it was the last time he sipped booze – nearly 50 years ago.
The legendary actor opens up about his battle with alcohol in his new memoir.
Early in Hopkins’ Hollywood career, he admits he was drinking a bottle of tequila a day.
“I wasn’t so much a heavy drinker as a lousy drinker,” he previously said. “I’d drink anything that was going, but couldn’t take it.”
The 87-year-old confessed he was teetering “at the brink of hell,” adding, “I used to space out and hallucinate. I was a lunatic, very hyper and manic. I was drinking all the time to kill the discomfort and self-contempt.”
But it all came to a literal crashing halt on December 29, 1975.
“I was driving over canyons, blacking out, not knowing where I was going. In the mornings, I would wonder, did I kill somebody? And I would check the front of my car,” the movie star recalled.
Hopkins Got Help Following Terrifying Moment
Hopkins said he joined Alcoholics Anonymous after one last bender.
Hopkins reflects on his fight for sobriety in his upcoming memoir, We Did OK, Kid. The Silence of the Lambs star said after hitting rock bottom, “I came to my senses and said to an ex-agent of mine at this party in Beverly Hills, ‘I need help.'”
The next morning, he rang Alcoholics Anonymous and made an appointment. He was soon in the AA office chatting with Dorothy, the contact counselor.
She asked him whether he had a problem with drinking. He admitted he did.
“But I don’t know what to do about it,” Hopkins said.
Dorothy told him to leave his phone number, and someone would call him shortly to offer advice.
Hopkins Changes His Way of Living
He said he hasn’t had a drink in nearly 50 years.
As Hopkins left, he said, he heard the voice of God. Dorothy’s last words to him were “Trust in God,” and later he admitted, “I had been waiting for someone to say that to me all along.”
As he ambled down the boulevard, half-sober and half-hungover, he recalled he had heard a voice whisper comfortingly in his ear, “It’s over. You can start living.”
A calmness flooded him, and he knew “that was when my life began.”
Rocketing to 88
Hopkins called himself a ‘lousy drinker.’
Hopkins expounded on his battles while appearing on the New York Times podcast The Interview, confessing 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.”
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!” the legendary Hollywood star explained.
