Anthony Hopkins doesn’t remember driving that night.
It was December 29, 1975, in California, and the actor, now 88 years old and with an Oscar on the shelf, was driving in a total blackout. When he came to, he realized something that chilled him to the bone: he could have killed someone, or killed himself, and at that moment he didn’t even care about dying.
That same night, he went to a party in Beverly Hills and confessed to his former agent that he needed help. As he recounted on The New York Times podcast ‘The Interview,’ that’s where he heard an inner voice, calm, like a radio announcer, telling him that everything was over and that he could start living. The urge to drink disappeared that night and never returned. In December 2024, he celebrated 49 years of sobriety, and in his new memoir, he admits something few would expect from him: he never knew he was an alcoholic until it had gone that far.
