Anthony Hopkins celebrated nearly five decades of sobriety on Sunday, revealing to fans that an incident led him to quit drinking for good in 1975.
“49 years ago today, I stopped,” begins the two-time Oscar-winning actor in a video posted on Instagram, as he usually does every December 29. He then confides that he felt like he was having fun at the time, until he realized he was in big trouble, driving a car “completely drunk.”
Anthony Hopkins, known for playing Dr. Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991), says the episode led him to seek help for his alcohol addiction. “On that fateful day, I realized I needed help and I got it. I called a group of people like me, alcoholics. And that’s it. Sober.”
“Having fun is wonderful, having a drink is good,” continues Anthony Hopkins. But if you have a problem with alcohol, there is help.” And the 86-year-old Welshman insists that alcoholism is a widely shared problem for which there are solutions. “There’s one thing I didn’t know, and that’s that I wasn’t unique,” he notes. There are thousands of people like me.”
Finally, Anthony Hopkins challenges a preconceived idea: sobriety is not “boring”. “Anyway, I got sober and, although it may sound boring, I had a wonderful life. They still employ me, he emphasizes, they still give me work. I’m going to be 87 in two days. I celebrate my long life — an unexpectedly long life.”
