Jason Bateman shares how cocaine addiction affected marriage in sad admission
Rhianna Benson
Featured Image Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
In a bombshell new interview, Jason Bateman admitted to almost losing his wife when his substance addiction reached 'unpredictable' new levels.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday (18 Feb), the actor confirmed he’d been stone-cold sober since 2001 - other than the occasional toke.
That year, he married fellow film star, actress Amanda Anka, almost two decades after they first met as teenagers at an LA Kings hockey game.
Bateman had been steadily rising through the Hollywood ranks when he and Anka tied the knot. He’d acted in the likes of Little House on the Prairie and The Hogan Family as a child, only going on to receive critical acclaim in 2003, when he landed the much-loved role of Michael Bluth in the sitcom Arrested Development - a part that earned him a Golden Globe Award in 2005.
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The years that followed saw Bateman, now 57, launch into a number of major film roles, including Dodgeball, Juno and Horrible Bosses.
He achieved even greater heights in 2017 by starring in and directing Netflix crime drama, Ozark, which went on to earn him a Primetime Emmy.
What fans of Bateman hadn’t known until recently, however, was that whilst getting his name out there, the actor was battling a steadily-growing dependency on both alcohol and cocaine.
Recalling his partner’s take, he told the publication this week that Anka saw his habit as a ‘drip, drip, drip’, that was ‘annoyingly unpredictable’.
"Amanda and I definitely had a few negotiations about the point at which the [partying] spigot was going to completely turn off," he recalled.
"She didn’t demand that I completely absolve, but that was sort of the back-and-forth, and 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*****g do it'."
Bateman has abstained from what he described as ‘the Scarface stuff’ since the year he and Anka, also 57, married.
As we say, however, he admitted to still dabbling in marijuana every now and again.
"I’ve got friends who had bottoms that were pretty chilling, but I was lucky enough to recognise, 'This is probably as far as I should go if I still want to accomplish the things that I want to get to'," the father-of-two - who shares daughters, Francesca, 19, and Maple, 14, with Anka - continued.
"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."
This isn’t the first time that Bateman has opened up on his addiction struggles, which he told Details in 2009 had never reached a place 'where rehab would have been appropriate'.
He added at the time: "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?"