Anthony Hopkins Opens Up About Realizing He's an Alcoholic: ‘I Need Help’

Anthony Hopkins can still recall the exact moment he realized he was going down a dark path.

“I’m always slightly reluctant to talk about it because I don’t want to sound preachy,” Hopkins told The New York Times in an interview published on Saturday, October 25, detailing an incident that occurred on December 29, 1975. “But I was drunk and driving my car here in California in a blackout, no clue where I was going, when I realized that I could have killed somebody — or myself, which I didn’t care about — and I realized that I was an alcoholic.”

He continued, “I came to my senses and said to an ex-agent of mine at this party in Beverly Hills, ‘I need help.’ It was 11 o’clock precisely — I looked at my watch — and this is the spooky part: Some deep powerful thought or voice spoke to me from inside and said: ‘It’s all over. Now you can start living. And it has all been for a purpose, so don’t forget one moment of it.’”

When asked for clarification on the “voice,” Hopkins noted that it originated from “deep inside” him.

“But it was vocal, male, reasonable, like a radio voice,” he explained. “The craving to drink was taken from me, or left. Now I don’t have any theories except divinity or that power that we all possess inside us that creates us from birth, life force, whatever it is. It’s a consciousness, I believe. That’s all I know.”

While promoting his upcoming memoir “We Did OK, Kid,” out November 4, Hopkins opened up about his relationship with his estranged daughter — and his efforts to reconnect.

“My wife, Stella [Arroyave], sent an invitation to come and see us,” he claimed. “Not a word of response. So I think, OK, fine. I wish her well, but I’m not going to waste blood over that. If you want to waste your life being in resentment, fine, go ahead. It’s not in my ken. I could carry resentment over the past, but that’s death. You’re not living. You have to acknowledge one thing: that we are imperfect.”

He continued, “We’re not saints. We’re all sinners and saints or whatever we are. We do the best we can. Life is painful. Sometimes people get hurt. Sometimes we get hurt. But you can’t live like that. You have to say, Get over it. And if you can’t get over it, fine, good luck to you. I have no judgment. But I did what I could. So that’s it. That’s all I want to say.”

When asked whether he hopes his daughter reads his memoir, Hopkins replied, “I’m not going to answer that. No. I don’t care.” As the reporter shared that they would “move on” from the subject, Hopkins admitted, “Please. I want you to. Because I don’t want to hurt her.”

Hopkins has been married three times, initially tying the knot with Petronella Barker in 1966. The pair, who share daughter Abigail, split in 1972. The next year, Hopkins exchanged vows with Jennifer Lynton. After splitting from Lynton in 2002, Hopkins said “I do” with Arroyave in 2003.

Abigail, for her part, shared with The Telegraph in 2006 that she would “possibly” be open to having a relationship with her father.

“It would have to be a two-way thing, though,” she said at the time. “I don’t know how I would feel about it. We have never really been close. We’ve never discussed big life issues. Because, well, our relationship was always so sporadic. I’ve never felt I could discuss those sort of things with him.”

She continued, “I love my father. He has been very supportive. I really wish him well. But I have found a certain independence through my music. I need to give myself that time, to move out of the shadow.”