Sir Anthony Hopkins is looking back on one of the most pivotal moments of his life, the night he realized he was an alcoholic and decided to turn things around.
During the October 25 episode of The New York Times podcast The Interview, the 87-year-old Academy Award winner discussed his upcoming memoir, We Did OK, Kid, and recounted the powerful experience that set him on the path to sobriety.
“I could have killed somebody, or myself”
Hopkins recalled being in a drunken blackout while driving through California decades ago when he suddenly came to a terrifying realization.
“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,” he told the outlet. “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 star said that the moment felt otherworldly, and even pinpointed the time it happened.
“It was 11 o’clock precisely, I looked at my watch, and this is the spooky part,” he recalled. “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”
Hopkins described that mysterious “voice” as calm, male, and rational, “like a radio voice”, and said that, from that moment on, his urge to drink disappeared entirely.
“The craving to drink was taken from me, or left,” he 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.”
Reflecting on his past, the Welsh actor admitted that his drinking once served as a way to mask deep emotional pain.
“After a lonely childhood and surviving those bullies, I drank to nullify that discomfort because it made me feel big,” he said. “Booze is terrific because it makes you instantly feel in a different space.”
He remembered the culture of heavy drinking that surrounded him early in his career: “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.”
“I wake up every morning going: I’m still here”
Now, approaching his 88th birthday, Hopkins said he’s filled with gratitude for simply being alive.
“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?’” he reflected. “I don’t know. But whatever’s keeping me here, thank you very much! Much obliged!”
Celebrating 49 years of sobriety
Hopkins marked 49 years of sobriety last December with an emotional video shared to Instagram.
“Forty-nine years ago today, I stopped,” he said in the post. “And I was having such fun. But then I realized I was in big, big trouble because I couldn’t remember anything and I was driving a car drunk out of my skull. Then on that fatal day, I realized I needed help. So I got it. 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’ upcoming memoir, We Did OK, Kid, is set for release on Nov. 4, offering a deeper look at the actor’s remarkable life, career, and nearly five decades of sobriety.