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Christian Slater feels like a Hollywood “survivor”.
The 43-year-old star has been acting since he was seven and his parents were also involved in the industry. Christian has spent time in rehab, been under the influence of alcohol and drugs and had several brushes with the law in the past. He realises that living in the public spotlight from such an early age was too much to cope with at times.
“Yeah, I do. So much of it feels like a weird, dreamy time. It was chaotic and bizarre. So now, this [looks around] is pretty good,” he told Total Film magazine when asked if his past feels like a different lifetime. “I have to say getting the hell out of Hollywood… that whole scene with the traps there is a set-up. When you’re a kid in the middle of it, you have to have such a solid foundation and if you don’t have that then you are going to be at the whim of all of the insanity and chaos out there. You’re lucky to survive it. I feel like a survivor. Yet they keep killing me in the movies. That’s the irony. For some reason Hollywood is insistent on me dying over and over and over again.”
Christian was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood during the mid '80s and early '90s, appearing in movies such as Heathers, Pump Up the Volume and True Romance. After his highly publicised arrests for drunk driving and assault, his career began to wane. The star has recalled realising he needed to clean up his act and turn his life around.
“Eventually my own compass forced me to look at situations in my life, the people around me and the influences and forced me to stop. I had to slow down and it certainly gave me a new perspective about everything. It opened my eyes to a more sustainable way of life, one that’s not quite as crazy and chaotic. I’m more relaxed,” he explained. “Would I have done things differently' I maybe would have not had as many drinks as I had. But you know, it’s being young and having the world handed to you and it just f**ks with your perspective on things. It’s a weird thing and overwhelming. I don’t feel like I was equipped to handle the stuff that was going on, so I did what I did to get through it and try to escape as much as possible.”