Sam Worthington slams Aussie drinking culture
Avatar’s Sam Worthington revealed the ultimatum from wife Lara that saved him from heavy drinking, “ingrained” in Australian society, after he clashed with paparazzi.
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Actor Sam Worthington revealed he almost lost his wife and career before dropping the heavy boozing “ingrained” in Australia’s drinking culture.
The star of Avatar: The Way of Water had a way with champagne that he didn’t see as being a problem until his wife Lara Worthington (nee Bingle) threatened to leave him the year he was accused of assaulting paparazzi in New York.
“I’d go haywire over someone asking me for a photograph or taking a photograph of me,” Worthington told Variety for a cover story promoting the Avatar sequel. “If someone approached me, my anxiety would go through the roof.”
His response was to drink even more heavily, making him “more emotional and erratic” the longer he drank. After the success of the original Avatar, Worthington said he knew cities around the world not in terms of neighbourhoods or monuments, but by his favourite bars.
“In Australia, it’s ingrained in the society,” Worthington said. “We don’t necessarily talk about AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] and things like that. You don’t recognise it’s an illness and you don’t understand that some people are just wired differently,” Worthington said.
“I don’t think I was mean, exactly, but I could be belligerent, petulant,” he added.
In 2014, Worthington was sued by photographer Shen Li after a clash with the Clash of the Titans star was caught on video, as then girlfriend Lara Bingle watched on. Worthington settled a week before it was due to go to trial in 2015.
Worthington said he was pulled back from the brink by an ultimatum from Lara, whom he married in December of that year.
“You can do what you want but I don’t need to be around this,” she told him, according to Variety.
Before one flight, Worthington drank four or five glasses of Champagne while waiting at the gate, which came as a shock to his wife.
“I couldn’t see it,” Worthington said. “I thought it was normal.” He adds, “I didn’t like who I was. Drinking helped me get through the day.”
He started drinking in the mornings, and “nine out of 10 people couldn’t tell”. “They could probably smell it on me, but when they looked at me, they couldn’t tell. I was still doing my job — I just don’t think I was doing it very well,” Worthington said.
After the ultimatum, Worthington stopped drinking and has remained sober for eight years. He moved his family from Australia to New York City, where stricter laws about paparazzi mean he can better protect the privacy of his three children, Rocket, Racer, and River.
Since giving up alcohol, Worthington said he adopted a new attitude and no longer chases major studio films to be a generic leading man.
“If I can’t bring anything to it, I’m not going to go and be involved in it,” he said. “I don’t want to do that again. I don’t want to just be the action figure standing in the front. And that’s OK. It takes a lot to understand what you do want from this industry.”
Highlights from the Variety cover story include:
LOSING THE ROLE OF JAMES BOND TO DANIEL CRAIG
Worthington was a finalist to play James Bond in “Casino Royale,” but he couldn’t pull off the suit.
“I could play Bond as a killer, but I couldn’t get the debonair down for the life of me,” Worthington said.
He was filmed in the tuxedo, and 007 franchise producer Barbara Broccoli, personally cut his hair in his hotel room before the screen test.
“The suit did not fit,” Worthington said.
SPITTING AT THE CAMERA TO WIN THE ROLE IN AVATAR
“I was just angry,” Worthington said of the secrecy around the audition, prompting him to spit his gum at the camera. “It was like, ‘You’re not telling me anything. This is a waste of time.’ Later, when they were like, ‘Jim Cameron wants to meet you, and this was for his movie,’ I was just like, ‘Oh shit, I’m going to get in trouble.’”
JAMES CAMERON WASN’T MAD
Director James Cameron was convinced that Worthington could bring the character of Jake Sully, and his evolution from grunt to rebel leader, to life.
“It was a bit daunting because he had an accent like Crocodile Dundee,” Cameron said. “I saw a lot of actors, names you’d be quite impressed by. But Sam was the guy who made me want to follow him into battle. He was the guy who made me want to go into hell with him, and the other actors never quite pulled it off.”
SHOWING UP WITH A DAD BOD TO THE CLASH OF THE TITANS SEQUEL
“I looked at it as Perseus was half a god and half a dad, and he had decided that he didn’t want the god part anymore,” Worthington said. “So I decided to develop a dad bod and that I wouldn’t care what I looked like. Of course, that’s antithetical to what a studio wants when they pay X amount of dollars to make a movie about a chiselled hero. My arrogance clashed with the studio and the director’s vision, and it turned into a horrible fight.”
“I could have handled things differently, instead of showing up on the first day with a big belly,” he added.
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