Fans of Denzel Washington may think they know a lot about his life off-screen, from his time growing up in Mount Vernon, New York to his 40-plus-year marriage to wife Pauletta. But now, in an interview for the Winter 2024 issue of Esquire, the Academy Award-winning actor is opening up about a darker side of his past - the 15-year period he says he spent “doing a lot of damage to his body” with drugs and alcohol.
The “Gladiator II” star admits he went through a time in his career after his critically-acclaimed performance in 1999's “The Hurricane” when he felt bitter, especially after losing out on the Best Actor Oscar to Kevin Spacey.
“I gave up. I got bitter,” the 69-year-old actor said in the interview. “So I’ll tell you, for about 15 years, from 1999 to 2014 when I put the beverage down, I was bitter.”
Washington says while he never got “strung out” on hard drugs or alcohol, he “shot dope” and drank wine.
“I was popping $4,000 bottles just because that’s what was left. And then later in those years I’d call Gil Turner’s Fine Wines & Spirits on Sunset Boulevard and say, Send me two bottles, the best of this or that,” he said. “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.”
Although Washington says he never drank while he was filming or getting ready for a role, he did spend much of the time between projects with the bottle. The star says he’ll be ten years sober in December. And while he knows he’s already done “a lot of damage to the body,” with diet, exercise and a strong sense of faith, he hopes to make the most of the time he has left.
“I stopped at sixty and I haven’t had a thimble’s worth since,” he said. “Things are opening up for me now—like being 70. It’s real. And it’s okay. This is the last chapter—if I get another 30, what do I want to do? My mother made it to 97.”