Denzel Washington admitted his past drug and alcohol use has left an impact on his health.
The “Gladiator II” actor, who is set to celebrate 10 years of sobriety on his 70th birthday in December, told Esquire in a new interview, “I’ve done a lot of damage to the body. We’ll see. I’ve been clean.”
“Things are opening up for me now — like being seventy. It’s real. And it’s OK. 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.”
The actor revealed he dabbled in a slew of substances over the years, but ultimately, wine was his main vice.
“Wine is very tricky. It’s very slow. It ain’t like, boom, all of a sudden,” he said
“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.”
Washington added: “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.”
However, when his family added a wine cellar to their house, the Oscar winner revealed he picked up a taste for “the best.”
“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 began making a habit of ordering his wines from Gil Turner’s Fine Wines & Spirits on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Calif., asking for “two bottles, the best of this or that.”
When his wife, Pauletta, asked him why he would only order two bottles each time, the actor said he told her, “‘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.”
Despite his habit, though, the actor said he refrained from drinking while working on his various projects.
“I never drank while I was working or preparing. I would clean up, go back to work — I could do both. However many months of shooting, bang, it’s time to go. Then, boom. Three months of wine, then time to go back to work,” he said.
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