Denzel Washington has come clean in a new interview about being “clean” for the past 10 years, adding his voice to the growing chorus of scientists, doctors and others who question the idea that regular consumption of wine is good for a person’s health.
“I’ve done a lot of damage to the body,” Washington, 69, has said in a lengthy new interview with Esquire. As the film legend and Oscar winner co-stars in the hotly anticipated “Gladiator II,” he opens up about how he developed a 15-year daily habit of heavy wine consumption — up to two bottles a day.
So, it’s true that Washington wasn’t what could be considered a “moderate” drinker. But the actor said his habit seemed to start harmlessly enough. He began to drink daily as a way of enjoying his Hollywood success and the wealth that came with it by collecting and consuming very fine, very pricey bottles of wine.
“Wine is very tricky,” Washington said. “It’s very slow. It ain’t like, boom, all of a sudden. And part of it was we built this big house in 1999 with a ten-thousand-bottle wine cellar, and I learned to drink the best.”
Unlike other people in the entertainment world, Washington said he never got “strung out” on heroin, cocaine or other hard drugs. He also never “got strung out on liquor.”
“Wine was my thing,” Washington said, explaining to Esquire that he was often drinking $4,000 bottles of wine.
“I had this ideal idea of wine tastings and all that — which is what it was at first,” Washington said. “And that’s a very subtle thing. I mean, I drank the best. I drank the best.”
Washington said he wouldn’t drink for the two months or so that he was working on a movie. For example, he didn’t drink during the filming of “Flight,” the 2012 film in which he plays an airline pilot who battles with alcohol addiction.
But once his work on a movie was done, Washington said he would return to his regular life, which meant he would start drinking wine again. In his pattern of disordered drinking, he said he would call Gil Turner’s Fine Wines & Spirits on Sunset Boulevard and say, “Send me two bottles, the best of this or that.”
But Washington would never order more bottles at a time. “And my wife’s saying, ‘Why do you keep ordering just two?’ I said, ‘Because if I order more, I’ll drink more.’”
“So I kept it to two bottles, and I would drink them both over the course of the day,” Washington said.
Fifteen years into his heavy consumption, Washington said he would call the liquor store and say, “Send me two bottles, and make it good stuff, but just two. And I’d drink them both over the course of the day.”
Speaking of “Flight,” Washington said he was working on the film “toward the end of the drinking.” In the movie, for which he was nominated for a best actor Oscar, he played a highly experienced commercial airline pilot who manages to execute a miraculous emergency landing while intoxicated. But, during the course of the film, his pilot faced up to the personal and professional damage caused by his addiction.
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Washington said he’s not sure whether the film was “therapeutic,” though it certainly got him thinking about “those who had been through addiction.” The “Training Day” actor said, “I knew a lot about waking up and looking around, not knowing what happened.”
Washington, who professes to have a strong faith in God, also realized that he was “put on this planet to do good. I’ve been blessed with this ability to act, and I’ve tried to use it for goodness’ sake.”
So, Washington said he got clean at the age of 60 and has not “had a thimble’s worth since.” He’s also been working out with a personal trainer. “I feel like I’m getting strong. Strong is important.” As he approaches 70, he also realizes that “things are opening up for me now.”
Washington’s personal story, and the self-described “damage” he imagines he did to his body, could be added to the growing backlash against the long-held idea that regular but moderate consumption of alcohol — usually seen as one or two glasses of red wine with dinner — could be beneficial to one’s health.
The possibility that a glass or two of red wine could reduce a person’s risk of a heart attack was “a lovely idea” that researchers “embraced,” starting in the 1980s, Tim Stockwell, an epidemiologist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, told the New York Times for a report in September.
Indeed, there were “hundreds” studies in the 1990s that linked alcohol to good health, including a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, the New York Times reported.
But some researchers remained skeptical and insisted that such findings were based on flawed data. A 2006 study, co-authored by Kaye Middleton Fillmore, a researcher at UC-San Francisco, found that a couple glasses of wine aren’t going to hurt you, but they aren’t going to help you much either, the Los Angeles Times reported.
More recently, “many more studies” have found that alcohol could even increase people’s risk of developing heart problems and related conditions, including high blood pressure and an irregular heart rhythm, the New York Times reported, citing the research of Dr. Leslie Cho, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic.
Alcohol’s links to cancer are clear, the World Health Organization has been saying since the 1980s. More recently, WHO and other agencies saying have insisted that no amount of alcohol is safe, regardless of whether you’re drinking wine, beer or liquor, the New York Times reported in 2023.