Why Do Actors Drink?

"Well, now," said the actor just returned. "I'm out of touch. What's on that's good?"

Lawson got fresh drinks and said, "They say that so-and-so's pretty fair."

"Can we get tickets tonight?"

"I believe we might," said Lawson.

So they had a few more jars/libations/snorts/pick-me-ups/toddies/slings/fizzes, and they went on to the theater. It was close to curtain time, but they did manage to get two seats in the gallery, or "up in the gods," as they say in England. In a merry state, verging on tight, but not yet pickled, the two friends squeezed into their seats. The lights went down and the curtain came up. The play went on for 10 minutes or so, at which point Lawson turned to his friend and whispered, "Something very interesting is about to happen."

"What's that?" hissed the friend.

"Well," said Lawson, "when that woman there onstage has finished dressing, I'm supposed to come on."

If the immediate fear of going on is great enough to make actors drink, still I'm not sure that the reluctance to get off isn't alcoholically more persuasive. Though I was not onstage myself, I was once part of a production of Strindberg's Miss Julie. After the last performance in the short run, the members of the cast simply lingered onstage, in the "room" that they had helped assemble during rehearsal. There was no scenery, just furniture and plants. They could not bear to go, to abandon the world of the play. Not that Miss Julie offers a comfortable world or a happy resolution. Two of the characters are at each other's throat night after night. But the comradeship of the show had been such that a sadness marked its close. These actors had other lives. But they did not want to quit the play--perhaps they would have preferred Strindberg's endless torture. I have heard such stories about other productions, the players left in the forsaken room, chatting into the night, waiting, hoping to be rescued, or for the play's dream to begin again.

You see, to be an actor--no matter your limits or flaws--is to partake of something close to certainty, which is a kind of rapture. You know what you must wear, what to say and where to move. Even if you perish every night in the play, you know how to do it, and you take pride in the craft. You do not have to admit to the real, limitless doubts in your own life. You have the light, the company, the stage, the lines--you are like a train with its tracks. There is such a clarity, even if you do no more than walk on once and say, "Your armies attend you, my lord."

In The Shining, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), bitterly on the wagon, prowls and grumbles through the empty spaces of the Overlook Hotel. The decor and the very light seem bathed in the pale iron color of liquor. He comes to an enormous ball-room lounge, turns on the lights, and in a mood of nostalgia goes up to the pristine, stripped bar. He covers his eyes, trying to conjure up a vision, and he says he'd give his soul for a glass of beer. Lo, he looks up, the shelves of the bar are supplied with all those pretty bottles, and there is Lloyd the perfect barman (Joe Turkel) with just Torrance to serve, and torrents to serve him.

"What'll it be?" Lloyd asks:

And Jack expands, he glows and begins to be emperor of the terrible establishment. "I'm awfully glad you asked that, Lloyd," he says, and opts for a bottle of bourbon. It will be a while yet before he asks for a shot of red rum. He has a bar and a Lloyd all his own. The wagon is wood for the fire in his eyes.

Shining, lit, loaded, boiled, smashed, pie-eyed, reeling, under the influence... all the synonyms for drunk with their uncanny combination of damage and... bliss? It reminds me of the way we talk about actors and acting. We say that performances are brilliant, lustrous, stunning, transcendent; we speak of the highest realm of acting, of a state of being there on the stage that is magical, otherworldly. And when actors manage this kind of getting up or out there, to reward us with their light, we think of the experience as illuminating. We get a little high or drunk on them. And being so moved, we leave (for a moment) lighter footprints in the real ground of our lives.

Yet if we hear stories of actors who have actually gone out there into the world of being under the influence--drunk, stoned, high--we regard it as, variously, absurd, pathetic, shameful, irresponsible, a bad example. River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho is out there, and many people found him extremely astonishing, beautiful, luminous, arresting. But River Phoenix in convulsions on the sidewalk outside a Hollywood club was... ghastly? tragic? a warning to us all?

Pages: 1 2 3 4