Hopkins has been very transparent about addiction over the years. He spoke in detail about that difficult period in his book We Did OK, Kidpublished in October 2025. From the pages of the memoir, the Silence of the Lambs star recounted when, a 37 yearshis doctor told him after a check-up that he had the physical condition of a 50 or 65 year old man.
«My memories of that period are confused. During the years of drinking I had caused a lot of pain. I never thought I was an alcoholic. Rarely does a heavy drinker realize this without intervention of some kindand even then it takes a while to metabolize it. Denial is the worst killer. I was still in the grip of my addiction, even though denying it was becoming increasingly difficult.”
As often happens, however, it was a potentially dramatic event that shook him, and made him understand that the time had come to get his life back under control: «One night I was driving drunk around Beverly Hills not knowing where I was going and I realized that I could kill someone or myself, which I didn’t even care about at the time,” he said last October in an interview with The Interview of the New York Times.
Shortly thereafter, he turned to his agent at a party and said: “I need help”. Of that night he remembers: «I heard a voice ask me: “Do you want to live or do you want to die?” “I want to live,” replied a voice from somewhere deep inside me. Then I heard the first voice say, “It’s all over now. You can start living.” The desire to drink left me. It was eleven o’clock on December 29, 1975».
From that moment his life changed, he began a detoxification process and still today attends meetings of the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
At the end of the happy new year video, the actor he addressed himself directly to those who today find themselves in the situation he found himself in as a young man: «Choose life instead of the opposite. Life, life, life and more life. In two days I will be 88 years old. So maybe I did something right, I don’t know. Happy New Year and happy life!”
