Jason Bateman decided to get sober because his drinking caused “tension” with wife Amanda Anka.
Anka, 57, called the “drip, drip, drip” of her partner’s partying decades ago “annoyingly unpredictable,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Wednesday.
She asked the “Ozark” star, also 57, when the “spigot was going to completely turn off.”
Bateman recalled they had “a few negotiation” about his drinking, “[She] didn’t demand that I completely absolve, but that was sort of the back-and-forth.
“I was like, ‘Well, I feel like my [sobriety] ETA is six months away, but if I could land this plane now, it would alleviate a lot of the tension, so let’s just f–king do it,’” the “SmartLess” podcast co-host continued.
Bateman clarified that he has abstained from alcohol and cocaine, which he dubbed “the ‘Scarface’ stuff,” since but does smoke marijuana.
“I’ve got friends who had bottoms that were pretty chilling, but I was lucky enough to recognize, ‘This is probably as far as I should go if I still want to accomplish the things that I want to get to,’” he told the outlet.
“I was conscious the whole time of wanting to get a lot of these boxes checked before I became a father and a guy with a career that I not only wanted but had a feeling I might be able to get it if I just got the right job,” the Emmy winner added.
Bateman married Anka in July 2001 — the same year he got sober.
The couple went on to welcome daughters Francesca, now 19, and Maple, now 14, in 2006 and 2012, respectively.
His sobriety, Malibu, Calif., wedding and “Arrested Development” role all happened within “12 to 24 months,” Bateman shared with Esquire in December 2025, adding that he also stopped smoking cigarettes.
The decade prior to that had been “confusing and challenging … learning curve” for the former child star, he explained to the magazine.
Bateman reiterated that there were “a handful things” he “couldn’t be doing” in order to be successful, and 30 seemed like the right time to “execute the plan” for success.
In 2009, he told Details (via NBC Miami) that while he “play[ed] hard … really well” in his 20s after “work[ing] so hard” as a kid, he was “never at a place where rehab would have been appropriate.”
Bateman noted, “Booze was what would make me want to stay out all night and do some blow or smoke a joint or whatever, so shutting that off was key. … So that’s the moment. Do you want to continue being great at being in your twenties, or do you want to step up and graduate into adulthood?”
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