It's hard to resist the allure of partying as a celebrity, but some of them don't know when to stop. From Hollywood icons to English legends, these actors tended to go a bit too hard after the sun went down.
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00:00It's hard to resist the allure of partying as a celebrity, but some of them don't know
00:04when to stop. From Hollywood icons to English legends, these actors tended to go a bit too
00:08hard after the sun went down.
00:11As the daughter of singer-actor Eddie Fisher and movie star Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher
00:15was Hollywood royalty. When her role as Princess Leia in Star Wars made her a star in her own
00:19right, she fell in with a hard-partying Hollywood crowd. Everyone knows that Carrie Fisher partied
00:24too hard because she wrote all about it during her second act as a best-selling author, particularly
00:28in her novel Postcards from the Edge, which was actually a thinly-veiled, semi-fictionalized
00:33warts-and-all autobiography.
00:35Flush with cash from Star Wars, Fisher was known for hosting wild, star-studded parties
00:39in her Laurel Canyon home. Then there was the time when she rented a house from Monty
00:43Python's Eric Idle during the filming of The Empire Strikes Back. As she recalled in a
00:472017 interview with the Daily Beast, Idle, who had recently returned from Tunisia, where
00:52he had been working on a Python project, called her up to reveal that the Rolling Stones had
00:56arrived and were ready to party. She reminisced,
00:58"...I called Harrison Ford and said, get over here, this is ridiculous."
01:02Despite having an early call time the next day, Fisher and Ford caroused with the Stones
01:06all through the night. She continued,
01:07"...We never went to sleep, so we weren't hungover. We were still drunk when we arrived
01:11in Cloud City the next day. We don't really smile a lot in the movie, but there, we're
01:16smiling."
01:17Robert Downey Jr. knows a thing or two about redemption. These days, the man who brought
01:20Iron Man to life is among the most respected and highly paid actors in the business. But
01:25back in the 1990s, Downey garnered endless notoriety as arguably the hardest-partying
01:30actor in Hollywood. That lifestyle surrounded him since childhood. His father, underground
01:34filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., introduced him to marijuana when he was just 6, and to cocaine
01:39not long after that.
01:41Ultimately, that set Downey Jr. on a path that led to his most scandalous episode, his
01:461996 arrest for trespassing, when he stumbled into a Malibu house he mistakenly believed
01:50to be his and passed out in a bedroom. Charged with possession of heroin, cocaine, and a
01:55.357 Magnum, he avoided jail time by being placed on probation, but was eventually sentenced
01:59to three years behind bars after missing two court-mandated drug tests. He ultimately served
02:0415 months.
02:06Within months of his release, he was arrested twice more on drug-related charges, but was
02:09sent to rehab instead of jail. That finally prompted Downey to put his hard-partying ways
02:13behind him. Since then, Downey has thrived as an actor while maintaining his sobriety,
02:18going as far as to win an Oscar for Oppenheimer. His party heart he passed, however, remains
02:22a sore spot. When one journalist asked him about it, he abruptly walked out of the interview.
02:26Well, I'm just asking questions, that's all.
02:28Right.
02:29Bye.
02:31Are you —
02:32I'm sorry, I —
02:34It's been said that anyone who remembers the 1960s didn't actually experience them, and
02:39Dennis Hopper could easily be the poster boy for that particular observation. After directing
02:43and starring in the counterculture classic Easy Rider, Hopper's enjoyment of excessive
02:47partying became legendary, easily eclipsing his subsequent work as an actor and director.
02:52Hopper admittedly spent much of the 1970s under the influence, particularly when portraying
02:56a photojournalist in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. According to George Hinkenlooper,
03:02director of Heart of Darkness, a filmmaker's apocalypse, a documentary chronicling the
03:05making of the film, Hopper was in rough shape. Hinkenlooper told The Independent,
03:10"[Dennis recounted the story to me that Francis came to him and said,
03:13What can I do to help you play this role?" Dennis said,
03:16"'About an ounce of cocaine.'" So he was being supplied by the film production drugs that
03:20he could use while he was shooting. While Hopper eventually embraced a life of sobriety,
03:24he revealed that the peak of his partying saw him regularly consuming 28 beers and half
03:28a gallon of rum, chased with three grams of cocaine, on a daily basis. He told GQ,
03:33"'It's not as hard as it sounds. If you mix the rum, like I used to, then you can drink
03:37it all day long. No problem.'"
03:39It's fair to say that Lindsay Lohan's transition from child star to acting adult was a bumpy
03:44one. After experiencing early success in The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday, and then Mean
03:48Girls, Lohan eventually became better known for her partying than her films. That included
03:52several arrests for infractions ranging from DUI to drug possession to shoplifting, multiple
03:57parole violations, and a few jail sentences. Luckily for her, overcrowding resulted in
04:02her one-day sentence on a cocaine bust ending in less than 90 minutes, and her 90-day sentence
04:07was reduced to two weeks.
04:09However, a particularly infamous chapter unfolded when Lohan threw herself a birthday party
04:13at Hollywood's famed Chateau Marmont. As recounted in Sean Levy's book The Castle on Sunset,
04:18Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont, Lohan and her guests racked
04:23up a bar bill of more than $2,500 by the end of the evening. Meanwhile, Lohan was also
04:28renting a suite, apparently under the impression that the producers of her new TV movie Liz
04:32and Dick would be covering her expenses. That didn't happen. At the end of her two-month
04:36stay, Lohan's tab had swelled to nearly $50,000, which she didn't — or couldn't — pay.
04:42She was presented with an itemized bill and informed that the hotel would no longer be
04:45extending any credit to her. For all intents and purposes, this meant that she was kicked
04:49out and banned from the place altogether.
04:52There was a time not all that long ago when Charlie Sheen was the highest-paid actor on
04:56television. At his peak, Sheen earned $1.8 million per episode for portraying a sanitized
05:01sitcom version of himself in Two and a Half Men. Until, in the ultimate irony, his real-life
05:05partying grew so extreme that it blew up the sweetest gig he'd ever had.
05:09I just have a different constitution, I have a different brain, I have a different heart,
05:12I have a different — you know, I get Tiger Blood, man.
05:14By the time Sheen cratered his career, he had already gained a rep as a hardcore party
05:18animal with a soft spot for sex workers. In 2013 alone, he reportedly spent more than
05:23$1.5 million to hire their services for his forays.
05:27Sheen's former personal assistant, Steve Hahn, told the Daily Mail just how wild those parties
05:31could get, alleging,
05:32Yes, there were porn stars, sometimes four at a time. I used to see him taking drugs
05:36in his room and in the party den and he drank scotch and chain-smoked.
05:40When throwing a party, Sheen was reportedly an excellent host, so much so that he routinely
05:44checked on guests who had passed out, monitoring their breathing to ensure that they were still
05:48alive.
05:49Don Belushi was nicknamed America's Guest by his Saturday Night Live co-star and good
05:54friend Dan Aykroyd. He apparently had a habit of knocking on the doors of complete strangers,
05:58inviting himself inside, and then raiding the refrigerator and making himself at home.
06:02His embrace of excess had no limits, which was certainly evident while filming The Blues
06:06Brothers. Belushi was partying so hard he could barely function, and was once found
06:10passed out on a stranger's sofa after vanishing from the set.
06:13An eyewitness to Belushi's behavior was Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh, no slouch in the partying
06:18department himself. During an appearance on The Late Show, Walsh told Stephen Colbert
06:22that the comedian could be scary to hang with. For proof, he recounted the time they dined
06:26together at Benihana, where Belushi decided to take charge of preparing the meal while
06:30channeling an iconic SNL character.
06:32And he went full-on samurai.
06:36How did that turn out?
06:40It was messy.
06:41Walsh also told Conan O'Brien about trashing a hotel room with Belushi, joking,
06:45We stayed up a couple weeks that night.
06:48Jack Nicholson has become a reclusive figure in recent years, having come to fame during
06:52the 1960s and 70s. In those days, Hollywood actors partied just as hard as the rock stars
06:57of the era, if not harder, and three-time Oscar winner Nicholson was well-known for
07:01his love of a good time.
07:02Back in the day, Nicholson's Los Angeles mansion on Mulholland Drive was once the center of
07:06seemingly non-stop parties, fueled by all manner of substances. According to journalist
07:11Bob Woodward's John Belushi biography, Wired, Nicholson offered guests what he called downstairs
07:16cocaine. The upstairs variant, the good stuff, he kept for himself.
07:20In a 2019 interview with Vulture, Nicholson's longtime girlfriend Angelica Houston claimed
07:24that Nicholson's use of the drug was never as extreme as people may have thought. She
07:28argued,
07:29He was never a guzzler. I think Jack sort of used it, probably like Freud did, in a
07:33rather smart way. Jack always had a bit of a problem with physical lethargy. He was tired,
07:37and I think probably at a certain age a little bump would cheer him up. Like espresso.
07:42These days, Drew Barrymore has successfully carved out a niche within the ultra-competitive
07:46daytime talk genre. It was decades earlier, however, during her childhood and adolescence,
07:51that the pint-sized star of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial became a major celebrity, even hosting Saturday
07:56Night Live at the age of 7.
07:57Well, how do you like spending a lot of time with grown-ups?
08:01Well, I feel the same way.
08:05That was just the tip of the iceberg.
08:07Despite her tender age, Barrymore became a fixture on the celebrity party scene. Accompanying
08:11her mother to New York City's Studio 54 when she was 9, the youngster was exposed to behavior
08:17and substances far beyond the scope of her age. While most children went to bed early
08:20so they could awaken for school, Barrymore was nightclubbing with her mom several nights
08:24each week, and celebrated her 10th birthday in a bar. By the time she was 13, all that
08:29partying had taken a toll. She told The Guardian,
08:31"...my life was not normal. I was not a kid in school with normal circumstances. There
08:35was something very abnormal, and I needed some severe shift."
08:39That shift was brought about by a stint in rehab, exposing her to a level of parental-style
08:43discipline that had been absent from her upbringing. Barrymore continued,
08:46"...it was a very important thing to experience for me. It was very humbling, very quieting."
08:52Kiefer Sutherland has been known to enjoy a party and has occasionally paid the price
08:55for it, evidenced by his numerous arrests, five of which were for driving under the influence.
09:00However, no incident has epitomized the 24-star celebratory spirit like the time when, in
09:05the midst of an on-camera interview, he spontaneously decided to tackle one of several Christmas
09:10trees on display in a hotel lobby. Why? As he later revealed, the whole thing was simply
09:14the capper on a highly enjoyable evening of partying with pals. Sutherland later confessed
09:19during a radio appearance on The Chris Moyles Show,
09:21"...the Christmas tree was just after a very funny night. People were offended that I had
09:25attacked the Christmas tree. I thought it was hysterical."
09:27According to Sutherland, his sole intent in rustling the tree to the ground was simply
09:31to induce laughter from his friends, a mission he accomplished, even if he didn't immediately
09:35recall it. He continued,
09:37"...I sadly didn't quite remember it the next day. I took a few whiskeys. Commitment and
09:41whiskey."
09:42Dashing is the word that's been associated with Peter O'Toole ever since his breakout
09:46role as the title character in the cinematic epic Lawrence of Arabia. Offscreen, though,
09:51the Irish actor generated a well-earned reputation for drunkenness. During his first appearance
09:56on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, for example, he'd been so inebriated that he didn't even
10:00make it through an entire segment.
10:01"...and they thought you were bombed out of your gourd or something like that."
10:04"...Well, y'all very kind."
10:09Meanwhile, he was also reportedly three sheets to the wind at the premiere of Lawrence, which,
10:13thankfully, was overshadowed by his brilliance onscreen. In 1975, at the age of 43, O'Toole
10:19underwent emergency surgery on his stomach, with doctors revealing he'd so badly damaged
10:23his innards with liquor that even a small amount could kill him.
10:26Despite that major wake-up call, O'Toole's biographer, Alexander Larman, insisted that
10:31accounts of the actor's drinking had been exaggerated. He told The Guardian,
10:34"...of course he drank, and he drank to excess. But I don't think that a lot of the stories
10:38about him are true. He liked to create these stories because it was much easier to play
10:42a part of a hellraiser."
10:43That renown, exaggerated or not, also underpinned one of O'Toole's most iconic roles, the swashbuckling
10:49and permanently soused movie star Alan Swan in the 1982 comedy My Favorite Year. O'Toole
10:55died at 81 in 2013. He went to his grave with eight Academy Award nominations, along
11:00with an honorary Oscar he was presented in 2010.
11:04Peter O'Toole was far from the only British actor who demonstrated a love of a good party
11:08while rocketing to stardom during the 1960s. When it came to drinking, Oliver Reed, known
11:13for his role in the musical Oliver and director Ken Russell's adaptation of the Who's rock
11:17opera Tommy, was in a league of his own. The hard-drinking Reed's most notorious moment
11:22occurred in a British pub, where he reportedly drank 126 pints of beer within a single 24-hour
11:27period. And as the story goes, he celebrated his achievement by doing a handstand on the
11:32bar.
11:33Stories of Reed's alcohol-fueled antics are many, including the time he out-drank fellow
11:37actor David Hemmings. After passing out, Hemmings awoke to find himself dangling from a window
11:41six stories above street level, with Reed laughing maniacally while holding him by his
11:46ankles. Reed simply found drunk people more enjoyable to be around. He once famously declared,
11:51You meet a better class of people in pubs."
11:53Reed had also apparently been banned from more than his fair share of those establishments
11:57over the years. He died at the age of 61, collapsing in the middle of a drinking contest
12:02at a pub in Malta.