Cary Grant claimed that he was “saved” by LSD
Working with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Walters and Howard Hawks on some of the most significant movies of the 20th century, there’s no doubt that Cary Grant was one of Hollywood’s greatest-ever leading actors. Rubbing shoulders with the likes of James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn as one of the most established stars of the era, he enjoyed 34 great years in the industry spotlight.
Though, much like all careers in Tinseltown, Cary’s life wasn’t quite as glamorous as the industry would suggest, enduring a difficult upbringing, with his father suffering from an alcohol addiction whilst his mother was also brought down with clinical depression. Taught to sing and dance at the age of four, Grant’s mother sparked his passion for the arts after taking him to the cinema and theatre, where he would develop a taste for performance.
Partly due to this tumultuous upbringing, Grant’s success in the industry would be far from smooth sailing, having trouble with real-life romance. Such would lead the actor to be married five times, divorcing on four occasions. Even more troubling was the control he enacted on his lovers, with his fourth wife Dyan Cannon, alleging that the actor controlled the way she dressed and even hit her on occasion.
Cannon also revealed her husband’s troubling addiction to LSD, a substance that the actor claimed stabilised his life once and for all. “During my LSD sessions, I would learn a great deal…And the result was a rebirth. I finally got where I wanted to go,” Grant stated in the documentary Becoming Cary Grant, as reported by The Guardian. Taking part in approximately 100 sessions with the drug from 1958-1961, Grant’s experiments can today be better recognised as the practice of microdosing, a controversial medicinal technique that sees users administer a small application of drugs on a regular basis.
Submitting himself to weekly sessions in Beverly Hills, Grant recalls having dramatic visions, stating: “In one LSD dream, I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from Earth like a spaceship”.
According to the director of Becoming Cary Grant, Mark Kidel: “He claimed he was saved by LSD,” explaining, “You have to remember that Cary was a private man. He rarely gave interviews. And yet, after taking acid, he personally contacted Good Housekeeping magazine and said: ‘I want to tell the world about this. It has changed my life. Everyone’s got to take it’”.
Despite his struggles, Grant enjoyed a healthy career, hitting great heights with the releases of Frank Tuttle’s This Is the Night, Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth and Irving Reis’ The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. The actor was best known for his collaborations with the British filmmaking mastermind Alfred Hitchcock, however, collaborating for 1941s Suspicion, 1946s Notorious, 1955s To Catch a Thief, and the iconic 1959 movie North by Northwest.
Take a look at the trailer for the documentary that delves into Grant’s experience with LSD below.
