In a new interview with Details, actor Jason Bateman reveals that his rampant drug and alcohol use almost cost him his marriage.
Bateman, now 40, rose to fame as a child actor on Silver Spoons and The Hogan Family. Wild partying soon followed.
“It was like Risky Business for 10 years,” he says of the nineties. “My parents were out of town, they left me a bunch of money, the car, and the house, and I didn’t know when they were coming home. I’d worked so hard that by the time I was 20, I wanted to play hard. And I did that really well.”
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“I was never at a place where rehab would have been appropriate,” he says of his drug use. “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. It’s like ketchup and French fries – I don’t want one without the other.”
He went on to wed actress Amanda Anka, whom he’d known since he was 18. But his partying didn’t stop.
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After coming home late one night, his wife finally gave him an ultimatum: Quit partying.
But he didn’t entirely stop. Things got so bad that she even took a planned holiday in Mexico without him. It was then, alone on a rainy Christmas morning, that he decided to go to an AA meeting.
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Looking back, Bateman tells Details, “Do you want to continue being great at being in your twenties, or do you want to step up and graduate into adulthood?”
He and his wife welcomed their first daughter, Francesca, in October 2006.
Jennifer Aniston – Bateman’s costar in the upcoming comedy The Baster (out next spring) – met him 15 years ago on a group ski trip to Aspen. She said she is proud at how far he’s come.
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“He should be here, he’s meant to be here, and for whatever reason, it’s taken until now,” she says. “There’s no bull**** with him. Even though he was pretty wild in those days, something about those dimples and that sweet face made you go, ‘Oh, it’s okay that you just drove up the street backwards in a Range Rover with the door wide open.’ I don’t know what was happening there. You feel instantly safe in his company.”
