There’s an unspoken tradition among British stage actors to drink up after a job well done.
For years, True Blood actor Stephen Moyer followed that tradition, much like his “heroes,” actors Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton and Oliver Reed.
“There’s this rush that happens from doing our job, this whirring buzz, and you want to continue that buzz,” Moyers, 45, explained at an event for the CLARE Foundation, a nonprofit treatment facility in Santa Monica, California, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Moyer reportedly talked publicly for the first time about how he eventually came to grips with his addiction and checked himself into an English facility 14 years ago.
He’s been sober since, said the star who moved to Los Angeles eight years ago to star in True Blood.
“Self-loathing motivates the desire to get loaded in the first place, and post-sobriety, there is the shame of admitting all of your faults,” Moyer, who serves on the CLARE board, told the crowd. “It’s about education. And it’s about getting rid of that shame.”
Nowadays, Moyer said, restaurants near where he lives with wife and former True Blood costar Anna Paquin know to automatically bring him a diet soda when he sits down to eat, with or without their twins Charlie and Poppy, who were born in 2012.
“The Diet Coke, which is the Patron Saint of drinks for alcoholics, gets put before me before anyone even asks what we’re drinking,” he said.
With True Blood over, Moyer is set to star opposite Katey Sagal in the FX period drama The Bastard Executioner, a new project in the works from Sons of Anarchy mastermind Kurt Sutter.