PHOTOS – Jonathan Rhys Meyers slideshow
Jonathan Rhys Meyers, starring in the new NBC show “Dracula,” has opened up about his battle with alcoholism and depression.
The Irish star, who has had major successes in “The Tudors,” “Mission Impossible” and more, has been checked in to rehab a half dozen times and was rushed to hospital after a suspected suicide attempt.
Speaking to the Irish Mirror he was candid about his battle with the 'demon drink' and staying sober.
“I was wild, I was as wild as you can get.
“When you are on the front of newspapers for stupidity, getting drunk at airports, fighting with cops and stuff like that, you wake up the next day and you can hardly f***ing remember it. Responsibility gets diminished.”
Talking about the darker times, now in recovery he said, “As you get older you see the stupid things you have done.
“It is not the consequences for yourself but your family get hurt, your friends get hurt.”
He continued “At some point you come to a place – and I was lucky because some of my friends have never got to that place – where I saw it as something that was separate from me. It is kind of insanity to do it to that level. I was able to come to that realization and I look for different things in life now.
“I had a good chat with my really close friends and I came to the end of whatever, going out, getting p***ed, getting into trouble. It got really boring because I knew where I was going to go the whole time. I knew where I was going to end up.
“Now I don’t do nothing. Once you make the decision you have had enough of something, the decision is made you have had enough...”
Meyers new role as “Dracula” is a new departure for the star, in that he’s taking on a supernatural role, something he wasn’t quite sure of when he first became attached to the project. However he said his aim was to bring the true suffering of a vampire across. He wanted to show what it would be like to live for 400 years, to not die, and not fall in love.
Basically he wanted to do something different from the “Twilight” movies.
He said “Twilight is good – it did what it did. The girls liked watching it, the guys were gorgeous, the girls were gorgeous – it worked. We thought of vampires more from the suffering point of view, what would it be to live for 400 years and not die and not fall in love.
“Dracula is really a monster and he is addicted to blood. But you can’t make a 10-hour series out of the original book. There is not enough there. It is beautifully written but what we did is take the story and try to modernize it with modern elements of power, corruption, wealth
“We wanted to take the Dracula story and bring in a kind of 'Da Vinci Code.' A financial and political side.
“There is a bit of sex as well.”
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