The award-winning role that saved John Goodman’s life: “I thought I was fooling people”
His onscreen persona may have become increasingly synonymous with jovial, larger-than-life characters, but John Goodman spent decades trying to navigate his career while battling alcoholism and depression.
Nobody knows what’s going on behind closed doors, and while the actor could always be relied upon to deliver the goods onscreen, he was in a dark place when the cameras weren’t rolling. When it began to impact his personal and professional lives to an unignorable extent, he knew something had to change.
Goodman has always been his harshest critic, too, and he’s copped to regretting his one, and so far only, chance at working with Martin Scorsese in Bringing Out the Dead after admitting that a combination of drink, depression, and family problems combined to turn what should have been a high point into a low.
Even when he was being widely acclaimed for his turns in various films and TV shows, he was struggling. Winning his first Primetime Emmy at the tenth time of asking should have been a victorious moment, but instead, Goodman’s prize for ‘Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series’ for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip coincided with his lowest point.
“I got so lucky because I was still getting hired for things, but the fact is, I was drinking at work,” he confessed. “My speech would be slurred. I thought I was fooling people. My cheeks would turn bright red when I was liquored up, and I just looked like a stop sign.”
When the time came for Goodman to collect his Emmy, he was a shambles. “I missed the rehearsal because I was drunk,” he explained to Today. “By the time Sunday morning rolled around, I was shaking, I was still drinking. I called my wife, which is like turning myself in to the Gestapo, and she made some phone calls.”
He’d made the decision to check himself into rehab, and “decided I liked the feeling.” Goodman had his last drink in 2007, and he hasn’t touched a drop since. His guest spot on Studio 60 was certainly deserving of an Emmy, but it became one of the defining moments of his life and career for entirely different reasons.
He’d gone from being so pissed he didn’t bother showing up for the rehearsal to realising he had to nip his alcoholism in the bud before it got any worse, plucking up the courage to phone his wife and admit that he needed help, which is always the hardest obstacle to overcome for anyone struggling with addiction.
Would things have turned out the same way if he hadn’t been Emmy-nominated? It’s hard to say, but the days leading up to the ceremony, when Goodman confessed he’d “had a long weekend playing golf with my friends” and inevitably consumed a hefty amount of booze, were the first dominoes to fall before he ended up in rehab. Winning awards isn’t the be-all and end-all for actors, but if he hadn’t made the shortlist, then perhaps he wouldn’t have come to the realisation that he needed to stop drinking.
