Samuel L. Jackson was too tired to resist his wife and best friend packing him off to rehab.
The “Do the Right Thing” actor has previously confessed to abusing cocaine and booze as he was shooting films with his long-time director collaborator Spike Lee. Jackson has now opened up about how he got clean, thanks to his wife, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, and a close pal finding him unconscious after a binge.
“My wife and daughter found me lying on the floor. My best friend from high school was a drug counselor, and my wife called him … I was in rehab the next day. I didn’t go kicking and screaming because I was tired,” he told AARP.
Jackson married his partner LaTanya Richardson Jackson 44 years ago in April after they first met in college. They have one daughter, Zoe.
“I was a f—— drug addict — and I was out of my mind a lot of the time — but I had a good reputation. Showed up on time, knew my lines, hit my marks,” he told Vanity Fair about how his drug abuse blighted the early days of their marriage.
Jackson’s Vanity Fair profile — in which he made the admission — said his wife referred to their New York home at the time as the “Villa in Hell” due to his drug use.
In the interview, the actor said he was gone a lot of the time after they first got married. He also admitted that, when he was around, he was “always isolated, snappy and irritable.”
Jackson said he didn’t want to admit at the time he was smoking crack as he was buying powdered cocaine and cooking it up himself.
“People who smoke crack buy rocks. I thought I was freebasing — but as it turns out, it’s the same thing,” he confessed.
