Whereas selling “Gladiator II” in current weeks, Denzel Washington has been giving followers a uncommon inside look into his decades-long profession, together with his previous struggles with drug and alcohol abuse.
In a brand new interview with Esquire revealed Tuesday, the 69-year-old actor, who’s been sober for almost 10 years, admitted his previous habits did “a lot of damage to the body,” regardless of him not having “a thimble’s worth since” he turned 60.
“I never got strung out on heroin. Never got strung out on coke. Never got strung out on hard drugs,” Washington stated. “I shot dope just like they shot dope, but I never got strung out.”
The 2-time Oscar winner shared that he wrestled with a “fifteen-year pattern” of consuming as properly, which he stated started with an unhealthy behavior of indulging in an excessive amount of wine.
Washington stated his love for wine first kicked off after he and his spouse of 41 years, Pauletta Washington, “built this big house in 1999 with a ten-thousand-bottle wine cellar,” which is the place he “learned to drink the best.”
“I had this ideal idea of wine tastings and all that — which is what it was at first. And that’s a very subtle thing. I mean, I drank the best. I drank the best,” he stated. “And fifteen years into it: Send me two bottles, and make it good stuff, but just two. And I’d drink them both over the course of the day.”
He described wine as “very tricky,” including, “It’s very slow. It ain’t like, boom, all of a sudden.”
Washington additionally defined why he solely drank two bottles at a time, recalling a time his spouse requested him about it.
“And my wife’s saying, ‘Why do you keep ordering just two?’ I said, ‘Because if I order more, I’ll drink more.’ So I kept it to two bottles, and I would drink them both over the course of the day,” he stated.
LISA O’CONNOR through Getty Pictures
The “Training Day” legend clarified that he “never drank” whereas “working or preparing” for the 50 motion pictures he’s starred in throughout his prolonged profession.
“I would clean up, go back to work — I could do both,” he stated. “However many months of shooting, bang, it’s time to go. Then, boom. Three months of wine, then time to go back to work,” he stated.
Nevertheless, he shared that across the time he completed filming for his 2012 film, “Flight,” by which he performed an alcoholic airline pilot, he was nearing the top of his consuming habits.
“I wasn’t drinking when we filmed ‘Flight,’ I know that, but I’m sure I did as soon as I finished,” Washington stated. “That was getting toward the end of the drinking, but I knew a lot about waking up and looking around, not knowing what happened.
Elsewhere in the interview, Washington opened up about his views on life and said that “things are opening up for me now” as he approaches turning 70.
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“This is the last chapter — if I get another thirty, what do I want to do? My mother made it to ninety-seven,” he stated. “I’m doing the best I can. And not only alcohol — forget all that. Strength.”
