‘Avatar’ actor reveals struggle with alcoholism: ‘Drinking helped me face the day’

by

“Avatar” star Sam Worthington, 46, has revealed to the world that alcoholism nearly ended his marriage, as well as his career. In an interview with “Variety”, the Australian actor of British origin associated the beginning of his problems with alcohol coincided with the fame he gained suddenly, shortly after the release of the first film in the franchise, in 2009.

Sam drank before filming and to this day he cannot say whether his professional colleagues noticed that he was drunk. “Maybe they could even smell it, but they wouldn’t say anything. I could still do my job, I just don’t think I could do it very well,” he reveals.

Fury attacks were also frequent. “I freaked out when someone asked me for a photo. If someone got close to me, my anxiety exploded”, said the actor, during the advertising campaign for the recently released “Avatar: O Caminho da Água”.

That’s when Sam started drinking. And exaggerating the dose, without you noticing. “I thought I was normal, I didn’t like who I was and drinking helped me face the day.” The actor says that excessive drinking is an ingrained habit in Australian society and this may have been one of the reasons why he took so long to ask for help. “We don’t talk about Alcoholics Anonymous, we don’t recognize it as a disease.”

After ‘Avatar’, he acted in ‘Terminator: Salvation’ (2009) and in ‘Clash of the Titans’ (2010), when he played the protagonist Perseus. The actor was arrested in 2014, the same year he married Lara Worthington, for assaulting a paparazzo in New York.

The episode, added to the ultimatum given by the woman, was the final straw for him to make the decision to stop drinking. “She said, ‘You can do whatever you want, but I don’t need to be stuck with it.’ The two are the parents of three boys and Sam has been sober ever since.

You May Also Like

Recommended for you