When "Harry Potter" and"The Woman in Black" star Daniel Radcliffe first revealed last summer that he had recently overcome a drinking problem, many fans shrugged it off as just another "boys will be boys" moment. You know, kids, growing up, it happens.
But now Radcliffe is speaking out in detail about his troubles with alcohol -- and it turns out that the problem was much more serious than previously believed, including nightly blackout binges and even showing up drunk on the set of "Harry Potter."
Forget Lord Voldemort, Radcliffe's biggest enemy was himself.
"I have a very addictive personality. It was a problem," Radcliffe told Heat magazine. "People with problems like that are very adept at hiding it. It was bad. I don't want to go into details but I drank a lot and it was daily - I mean nightly. I can honestly say I never drank at work on "Harry Potter." I went into work still drunk, but I never drank at work. I can point to many scenes where I'm just gone. Dead behind the eyes."
"In the last three years of drinking I blacked out nearly every time. Blacking out was my thing," Radcliffe added in an interview with ShortList.
"The drinking was unhealthy and damaging to my body and my social life. That's beyond question. I was living in constant fear of who I'd meet, what I might have said to them, what I might have done with them, so I'd stay in my apartment for days and drink alone. I was a recluse at 20. It was pathetic — it wasn't me. I'm a fun, polite person and it turned me into a rude bore. For a long time people were saying to me, "We think you have a problem," but in the end I had to come to the realization myself."
One person who helped Radcliffe come to that realization? In a bit of life imitating art, it was veteran actor Gary Oldman, who of course played Harry Potter's mentor Sirius Black.
"I did talk to him about it once," Radcliffe said. "I didn’t say I had a problem — because I didn't think I did at that point — but I told him I shared that mentality he had for actively seeking out chaos. He just said, "You can’t keep doing this. You’ve got too much to lose." And that really went in. But not even he could have stopped me alone — I had to stop myself. And stopping has shown me a world of happiness that I didn’t think was possible."
Amen to that, Daniel.
