Jason Isaacs had a moment in the ‘90s when he could have been a major star. He was booking all kinds of prestigious work and he was on the cusp in that way that many actors are. And then nothing much happened – Isaacs continued to work in a wide variety of film and TV projects, and he’s still a well-liked and respected actor. There are so many of those actors who – I think – have a moment when they could have been a bigger deal and then something happens and their careers never take off in a huge way. In Jason Isaacs’ case, perhaps he never got to that next level because he struggled with addiction in a profound way for twenty years. He revealed this in an interview with the Big Issue:
An addictive personality: “I’ve always had an addictive personality and by the age of 16 I’d already passed through drink and was getting started on a decades long love affair with drugs. Every action was filtered through a burning need I had for being as far from a conscious, thinking, feeling person as possible. No message would get through for nearly 20 years.”
He first got drunk at the age of 12: “The barman, who we thought at the time was a hero and I now realise belonged in prison, sneaked us a full bottle of Southern Comfort. We drank the entire thing in the toilet, then staggered out into the party, reeling around farcically. I vomited, fell on and pulled down a giant curtain, snogged a girl, god bless her… ran out into the street, vomited again, tripped, smashed my head open on the pavement and gushed blood all over my clothes. The next morning, I woke up with a splitting headache, stinking of puke with a huge scab and the memory of having utterly shamed myself. All I could think was… I cannot f–king wait to do that again. Why? I’ve no idea. Genes? Nurture? Star sign? I just know I chased the sheer ecstatic joy I felt that night for another 20 years with increasingly dire consequences.”
He’s okay now: “I think what would surprise the 16-year-old me is that I’m okay. That I manage to find simple happiness in simple things. Not always, not perfectly, but enough. I thought I was broken. I remember there being a moment, not long before I got clean, when it suddenly occurred to me that if everybody I knew died, literally every single person, I probably wouldn’t mind that much. In fact, I might like it, because then it would be an excuse to sit in a room by myself and take drugs and everybody else would say, well you know, fair enough, you heard what happened didn’t you?”
Isaacs is 57 years old, and I guess he’s saying that he was still in the throes of alcoholism well into his 30s. Which is what happens for a lot of people who struggle with addiction – they spend their teens and 20s in a stupor and then they start to get clean and sober in their 30s. For many people there will be some backsliding and some sobriety failures. But in Isaacs’ case, it sounds like he climbed out of it and has been healthy and sober for more than twenty years. A blessing! I’ve been sober since… 2011, I think. I did it without a program or rehab and clearly, I don’t count my days or anything. What it felt like for me was that I just outgrew it – I got to an age where I was suddenly tired of drinking, tired of feeling that way, tired of the hangovers, tired of thinking about it. I too have an addictive personality and I’m glad that I’m sober now.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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