Jack Black on his early struggles with cocaine use
In the 2008 movie Tropic Thunder, Jack Black played a drug-addled actor named Jeff Portnoy who was struggling to keep his additions under control. It seemed like a stretch for the jovial and jolly Black, who was better known for his comfort, relatively family-friendly comedy.
However, as Black told Parade Magazine around the release of 2015’s Goosebumps, the actor had his own struggles to relate to. “Goosebumps was a great adventure and a really fun role,” Black claimed. “It’s about forgiveness and not letting your rage and thirst for revenge control you, but it’s also about how some of those darker emotions can be used to create great masterworks. I play a guy with a dark past and a brilliant mind, wrestling with his own demons, literally.”
For the role, Black pulled from his own struggles with drug abuse in his teenage years. ”I remember just lots of turmoil from that time period,” Black said. “I was having a lot of troubles with cocaine… I was hanging out with some pretty rough characters. I was scared to go to school [because] one of them wanted to kill me.”
“I spilled my guts, telling him I felt guilty about stealing from my mom to get money for cocaine,” Black recalled about a fateful encounter with a guidance counsellor. “I cried like a baby. It was a huge release and a huge relief. I left feeling euphoric, like an enormous weight had been lifted from me. It changed me.”
His struggles, along with some personal tragedies, helped shape Black’s own parenting style. “Sometimes I think maybe I’m a little bit of a helicopter dad hovering above my kids and making sure that they never are in harm’s way,” he explained. “Losing a family member is the worst thing I could imagine,” he says.
Black’s brother Howard died from AIDS in 1989, when Black was only 20. “I have two gay siblings: my big sister, Rachel, and my big brother, Howard,” he says. “He was a big influence on me. He took me to my first rock concert. I was 11; he was 23. He was so vibrant, creative, amazing. He shaped my taste in music.”
“[Death] didn’t happen quickly. We all saw the deterioration. He was only 31. So very young,” Black remembered about Howard’s death. “We were robbed of something precious. It was devastating. It was hard for all of us, but it was hardest for my mom when we lost Howard. She’s never really recovered.”
