Lady Gaga falls in love with a rock star struggling with drug and alcohol addiction (played by Bradley Cooper) in her upcoming movie, A Star Is Born. Filming the remake of the 1937 drama hit close to home for the pop star, who said in a new interview that drugs were readily available to her after she became famous.
“There was a buffet of options,” Gaga, 32, told the Los Angeles Times in a profile published on Thursday, August 30. “It’s very lonely being a performer. There’s a certain loneliness that I feel, anyway — that I’m the only one that does what I do. So it feels like no one understands. And the urge to use is because you’re searching for a way to quell the pain.”
The six-time Grammy winner recalled that “there was stuff everywhere” when she performed in New York City nightclubs before the 2008 release of her debut single, “Just Dance.”
“But I had already partied when I was younger so I didn’t dabble,” she clarified to the newspaper. “I was able to avoid it because I did it when I was a kid.”
Gaga (real name Stefani Germanotta) did not let her surroundings stop her from being a go-getter, though.
“When I wanted to become a singer, I hit the concrete running,” she said. “I was dragging my piano from dive bar to dive bar to play music. I was calling people, faking being my own manager to get gigs. I really believed in myself that I could do this and that I wasn’t going to stop until I made it. … The truth is, if we were not sitting here today and I hadn’t sold as many records as I have, I’d still be in a bar somewhere playing the piano and singing. It’s just who I want to be.”
The “Bad Romance” singer has been candid through the years about her past with cocaine addiction.
“I was so unhappy,” she said on The Howard Stern Show in July 2011. “I think that I was lonely and there was something about the drugs that made me feel like I had a friend. … I did it all alone in my apartment while I wrote music. And you know what? I regret every line I ever did. … Don’t touch it. It’s the devil.”
A Star Is Born hits theaters on Friday, October 5.
