The 66-year old-character actor gave up alcohol in 2007 and still attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings almost every day.
John Goodman, 66-year-old character actor and Roseanne star, shared details about his life, including his struggles with alcohol, in an interview with The Sunday Times.
Goodman now lives in New Orleans with his wife, Annabeth. Despite an earlier prediction that his career would have dried up by now, he has roles on HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones and BBC2’s Black Earth Rising.
However, his life may not be as idyllic if he had not gotten his alcoholism under control, he revealed.
“I was an alcoholic parent. If I saw a bottle of vodka I had to have it, it was a compulsion,” he told The Times. “My wife had given up on me, I sometimes wondered if she was just waiting for me to die. She’d had enough.”
Goodman gave up alcohol in 2007 and has been sober since then. He says he still goes to Alcoholics Anonymous almost every day. “You never beat it, it’s a daily thing,” he said.
When the interviewer suggested that beating alcoholism must have taken a lot of willpower, Goodman declined to take credit.
“It didn’t have anything to do with will. It just grew old,” he admitted. “I was unhealthy and I was hurting people and I tired of it.”
Giving up alcohol also gave way to healthier living for Goodman. He began to eat less and exercise more, and despite two knee replacements is feeling the best he’s felt in years.
“I do about 40 minutes on an elliptical machine every day. And I don’t eat as much as I used to. I was eating alcoholically—with both hands,” he said, adding that he does not follow any special diet plans. “I just eat smaller portions.”
His career, and happiness, recently took a hit with the cancellation of the Roseanne revival due to a racist tweet by the show’s titular star, Roseanne Barr.
“I was broken-hearted, but I thought, ‘OK, it’s just show business, I’m going to let it go.’ But I went through a period, about a month, where I was very depressed,” he revealed. “I’m a depressive anyway, so any excuse that I can get to lower myself, I will. But that had a great deal to do with it, more than I wanted to admit.”
He did not expect the network, ABC, to react the way it did.
“I was surprised. I’ll put it this way, I was surprised at the response. And that’s probably all I should say about it,” he said, pausing. “I know, I know, for a fact that she’s not a racist.”
