Denzel Washington has opened up about his past drug and alcohol use, and even admitted to having “done a lot of damage” to his body. The 69-year-old Oscar winner has been sober for almost 10 years now.
The Gladiator II actor got candid about his past in the Winter issue of Esquire, explaining how his unhealthy habits started with wine. “Wine is very tricky. It’s very slow. It ain’t like, boom, all of a sudden,” he said in the interview.
Washington added, “I never got strung out on heroin. Never got strung out on coke. Never got strung out on hard drugs. I shot dope just like they shot dope, but I never got strung out.”
He further explained, “And I never got strung out on liquor. I had this ideal idea of wine tastings and all that — which is what it was at first. And that’s a very subtle thing. I mean, I drank the best.”
Washington revealed that he had a huge wine cellar in his home. He said he would often spend thousands of dollars on expensive bottles.
“I learned to drink the best. So I’m gonna drink my ’61s and my ’82s and whatever we had. Wine was my thing, and now I was popping $4,000 bottles just because that’s what was left,” he said. “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.’”
Washington’s wife, Pauletta, would ask him why he would order only two bottles at a time, and he would reply, “‘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.”
‘I’ve done a lot of damage to the body’
Washington said that although he did frequently use alcohol, he would never indulge while filming. “I never drank while I was working or preparing. I would clean up, go back to work — I could do both,” he said. “However many months of shooting, bang, it’s time to go. Then, boom. Three months of wine, then time to go back to work.”
Washington confirmed that he “wasn’t drinking” when he filmed Flight, 2012 drama in which he played an alcoholic pilot. “I’m sure I did as soon as I finished. That was getting toward the end of the drinking, but I knew a lot about waking up and looking around, not knowing what happened,” he said.
Washington finally quit drinking after his 60th birthday in December 2014. “I’ve done a lot of damage to the body. We’ll see. I’ve been clean,” the actor admitted.
Washington, who is set to turn 70 on December 28, said that “this is the last chapter.”
Recently, Washington announced that he would be retiring following his next set of films. “Things are opening up for me now — like being seventy. It’s real. And it’s okay,” he said. “This is the last chapter — if I get another thirty, what do I want to do? My mother made it to ninety-seven. I’m doing the best I can.”