“When my mother would start teasing my father—and of course, in front of the children, it didn’t matter to her—he, strangely enough, remained stoic and never, even though she treated him to terrible things, would just stand there and watch her while she inflicted pain on him, and he swallowed it. He accepted it.”The actor recalled that his father never once lost his temper, attacked his mother, or even spoke harshly to her. Several times, the situation escalated to the point where his father had tears in his eyes as he watched her silently. The worst thing his father did was punch a wall with his fist—once so hard that his hand shattered on the hard concrete—but he never touched her or argued with her. Despite this, according to the star, he remained a gentleman.
“As a five-year-old, I kept wondering: why does he put up with this? How does he put up with this? And why doesn’t he leave her? But he didn’t. He was able to stay calm and composed. He was able to maintain relationships with children. He’s a good man.”
He started taking pills at age 11.
Eventually, his father left the family, telling his son he couldn’t live like that anymore.
His parents separated when he was 15. Although he initially considered his father’s departure “cowardly,” he later realized his father had simply made a decision he believed was best for himself.After the divorce, his mother’s condition continued to deteriorate.
“She fell into a deep depression and attempted suicide by swallowing ‘a lot of pills.’ She survived, but she was never the same. She lived on the couch and weighed about 70 pounds.”
Unfortunately, his mother’s drug addiction also became a gateway to the young star’s career. The substance abuse he struggled with for most of his life began at a young age. He claims he started taking his mother’s “nerve pills” at age 11, started smoking at 12, and by 14, had tried “every kind of drug there was.”
His mother died in 2016. In retrospect, the actor said he is grateful for the way she raised him — but not in the way you might expect.
“I’m grateful to her for that,” he continued. “She taught me how not to raise children. Just do the exact opposite of what she did.”
After dropping out of high school in 1979, the actor joined the band The Kids and moved to Los Angeles.
Teen idol
“I started acting by accident,” he admitted.
His longtime friend, renowned actor Nicolas Cage, suggested contacting his agent, which eventually led to auditions with a renowned director.“Somehow I managed to get a role in ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street,’” he recalled.
