5 Actors Whose Careers Were Almost Ruined by Drugs

Drugs touch every corner of society, impacting all walks of life, relationships with loved ones, and employment in just about every industry. Perhaps, though, few industries are more well known for substance abuse than acting. More specifically, Hollywood actors.

As a kid, you'd be hard pressed not to find yourself eye-level with a copy of the latest National Enquirer headlining a Hollywood drug scandal as you waited in the grocery line with your mom. Things haven't changed much at all over the decades. Nowadays, the only difference is those gossip mag headlines live in your feed. Drug use among actors and celebrities hasn't.

Below we explore several of Hollywood's biggest celebrities whose acting careers were at peril before cleaning up their act and seeking substance use rehab.

Without further ado, here are five well known actors who went down a dark path but managed to recover and fight their way back onto the silver screen.

Samuel L. Jackson was inspired to pursue acting by an aunt during his childhood, leading him to attend Morehouse College in Atlanta in the mid-1960s. He first studied marine biology but couldn't resist the attraction of the stage. So, he changed his major to drama, got involved in theater work, and began to get past his speech problem.

In the late 1970s, Samuel L. Jackson met LaTanya Richardson, an actress who would be his life partner. They moved to New York City to face the challenge of chasing acting careers and making a life together. The tough reality of living in an expensive city as struggling actors led Samuel to start using addictive substances to cope. This started years of substance abuse for him.

Samuel L. Jackson, like many actors in the 1980s, was using a variety of addictive substances. His life was chaotic at this time. Trying to launch his acting career, Samuel also married LaTanya and they welcomed their daughter into the world in 1982. Jackson started using drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism, just like many others.

At age 15, Samuel first tried using drugs for fun. When he moved to New York in the late 1970s, a time when lots of people were using drugs freely, especially actors, his drug use got worse. By the 1980s, not only was Samuel drinking a lot, but he was also smoking marijuana and taking LSD. Around this time, he began freebasing cocaine too, which caused chaos in his life for the next twenty years.

Samuel L. Jackson did not think of himself as a crack addict, though. Instead of getting small rocks of crack cocaine every day, he would buy bigger amounts of powdered cocaine and make freebase cocaine at home by himself. Even with this reasoning, Jackson realized that using cocaine was becoming increasingly harmful.

In 1991, after nearly two decades of battling substance abuse, Samuel had a wake-up call due to a grim incident: surrounded by items linked to crack cocaine use, he was found unconscious in their home's kitchen by his wife and eight-year-old daughter.

Lovato has struggled with substance abuse since 2010, going to rehabs, relapsing, and then getting sober again. In March 2018, the pop star said they had been sober for six years after a long time. But in July 2018, there were lots of news reports that Demi Lovato had an overdose.

In their documentary series, Lovato mentioned that in 2018 when they relapsed, they picked up a bottle of red wine and within less than 30 minutes, called someone she knew had drugs. Lovato started using drugs she hadn't tried before like Methamphetamine.

Explaining further, at one party night Lovato shared how they used meth with molly, cocaine, marijuana, alcohol, and OxyContin. Looking back now, Lovato realizes that this alone could have caused their death. Once Lovato even asked their dealer for Xanax and cocaine but the dealer only had heroin and crack cocaine available.

At that point, Lovato says they started using heroin for fun and got hooked on it. Heroin, a strong opioid drug from morphine, causes tough withdrawal symptoms like muscle and bone pain, diarrhea and vomiting, cold flashes, and legs that won't stay still.

On the night she overdosed, Lovato told their friends she was heading to bed but really went upstairs to contact a dealer. It turns out, the heroin Lovato used was likely Fentanyl instead. After giving Lovato drugs and taking advantage of them, the dealer left them alone. The next morning, when Lovato's assistant discovered them, they were naked and blue. A 911 call was placed at 11:22 am on July 24th, 2018, leading paramedics to hurry over and administer Narcan in an effort to save Lovato’s life.

Lovato had three strokes and a heart attack because of the overdose. The strokes caused her to suffer brain damage, she now has blind spots in her vision and can't drive anymore. At the hospital, Lovato got dialysis while doctors worked hard to save them, even though Lovato had multiple organ failures. Her documentary series says she would have died if they hadn't gotten treatment within another five to 10 minutes.

Since their overdose in 2018, Lovato has focused on recovering both physically and mentally. In the documentary series, Lovato shared that the quarantine caused by COVID-19 helped them work through past traumas and brought about a time of rediscovery.

Bradley Cooper once shared that after he hurt his Achilles tendon and left the show 'Alias' in 2003, he turned to substances for comfort. He also mentioned that when times were tough and he was dealing with addiction early on in his career, it was actor Will Arnett who helped him get better.

In 2012, Bradley Cooper talked about his addiction problems. He said he had trouble with it through his 20s. He got better when he was 29 years old. His problem with painkillers and drinking started to mess up his life and job too. That made him want to get help.

He said once he was so drunk he hit his head on the concrete on purpose and had to go to the hospital. The way he was living could really mess some people up, but he wanted to do better and be sober because he had big dreams and Hollywood ambitions.

After he knew he needed help, he found a good rehab center that showed him the 12-step recovery program. Now, he says his success and way of living are because he got clean and stayed clean.

The best thing for Bradley Cooper is that he has used what he learned from dealing with addictions to perform even better in movies. This helped him a lot in 'The Hangover' and even more in the hit movie, 'A Star is Born'.

Lindsay Lohan was really popular in teen movies after she acted in some super funny and memorable films in the 2000s. But the star from 'Freaky Friday' faced a lot of problems with addiction and trouble in her love life, which made her career go off track.

The now 37-year-old first became famous in the 1998 movie, 'The Parent Trap'. In it, she played twins with Natasha Richardson acting as her mom. But it was the movie 'Mean Girls' that made her really famous. This was her first big movie after Disney and made her a huge Hollywood star. She won five awards for playing Cady Heron, including two MTV Video Awards.

Lindsay talked openly about her past problems with addiction. She told Oprah Winfrey before that she used to take cocaine "10 to 15 times a day" and also drank alcohol a lot in her early 20s. Lindsay has, quite famously, gone to rehab many times.

If Lindsay had to pick her worst year from a time when things weren't going well for her, it would likely be 2007. That was the year when she faced some of her biggest troubles and even ended up in jail for a little while.

Lindsay had a rough year. She was found guilty of driving drunk twice and once for using cocaine. Her second time getting in trouble happened just two weeks after she left rehab. Also, in 2009, she didn't go to her classes for people who use drugs so much that the court told her she had to attend.

After some hard years, Lindsay is now focusing on good things and making a comeback in movies. She talked to Hollywood Reporter and said, "Acting for me is like riding a bike. It's just part of who I am." She also shared that she got married to her fiancé Bader Shammas in 2022. They had a private wedding. They met three years ago in Dubai. That's where Lindsay has been living for the last seven years.

Zac Efron has spent a lot of his life in the spotlight, but with money and fame comes a huge wave of attention for everything in a celebrity’s life, and for Zac, it was no different. And on his way to the top he faced many challenges that lots of people outside the entertainment industry can't understand.

Alcohol, drugs and parties quickly became normal for actors like him, and remembering to stay down-to-earth got harder. But even with the challenges child stars face in their careers, Zac was able to beat the darkness, all while doing it in front of everyone.

Zac started his career early, after his dad pushed him to follow a musical direction and signed him up for piano and singing classes. Zac's talents shone in 1999 after he acted in a theater show of 'Gypsy' which marked his first big role as an actor. This launched many roles on TV shows for Zac, with some of his earliest acting jobs being on TV series like 'Firefly' and NBC's 'ER'.

He later showed up in the movie 'Miracle Run', for which he got a nomination for the Young Artist Award, making him known to directors and producers. But even though the movies didn't make much money, Zac's name was still growing in Hollywood and his good looks were helping him out, too.

In 2013, Zac's polished Disney reputation had gone out of control as he ended up in a rehab center for a cocaine problem. Thinking back on his recovery process the next year, he told The Hollywood Reporter he was drinking too much.

Zac made his return to acting in 2014 in the funny movie 'The Awkward Moment', where he reminded everyone of just how handsome he was. Later that year he played a confident frat boy in the comedy 'Bad Neighbors', which earned a huge $270 million at the box office, making it one of the top-earning R-rated movies in the US. More recently he starred in 'Ricky Stanicky', 'The Iron Claw', and 'The Greatest Beer Run Ever'.