Celebrities Who Quit Drinking
When you picture a Hollywood party or backstage at a huge concert, you probably picture champagne flowing, fancy wines and all manner of exotic mixed drinks. But the truth is that a significant number of celebrities don’t drink, either because they’ve struggled with addiction and alcoholism or because they simply don’t think that drinking aligns with their goals. Among the stars who are proudly sober are Kelly Ripa, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes, Robert Downey Jr., and many more.
Last December, for example, Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins celebrated a whopping 48 years of sobriety. “Hello there, Happy New Year to you all!” he said in an Instagram video. “All of you revelers and drinkers all having fun. Wonderful!”
“Happy New Year, have a great time. If you get a hangover, remember me,” she said. “I don’t get them anymore because 48 years ago today, I stopped. I got help for it and my life changed. I don’t envy you having fun out there, but if you need help, there’s a time. Life is in session. Go for it.”
To check out all the celebrities who have taken a step back from drinking, and why they’ve taken that important decision, scroll below!
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, you can get help by calling the Drug Addiction Hotline at 1-877-813-5721.
A version of this article was previously published in 2017.
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Machine Gun Kelly
Machine Gun Kelly (né Colson Baker) opened up on the Bumb Blonde podcast about hitting his one-year milestone without alcohol. “I don’t drink anymore. I haven’t [drunk] since last August,” MGK said on the August 5, 2024, episode, per People.
For Kelly, the decision happened when he went to rehab for the first time in 2023 for his use of alcohol, marijuana and pills such as hydrocodone, Percocet and Vyvanse.
“I continue to embrace that this journey is gonna be hard for me, but I accept it and forgive myself, he said as he reflected on sobriety. “I’m also really hard on myself, very self-deprecating. I’m just happy that I’m able to start to be comfortable enough to show people who I am because I kind of depended on my art to do that.”
Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway opened up about being sober in a candid interview with The New York Times.
“I don’t normally talk about it, but I am over five years sober,” she said. “That feels like a milestone to me.” It is indeed!
As for a reason, the actress hinted the decision had to do with her feeling more comfortable in her own body. “Was drinking a way of dealing with [the stress]?” the interviewer asked. “Probably,” she replied.
Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr. spent 20 solid years abusing alcohol and drugs, hitting rock bottom in the late 1990s, when he was arrested for firing a gun out of a car window on Sunset Boulevard and falling asleep in an 11-year-old girl’s bed in a stranger’s house (these were separate incidents). His drinking and drug abuse landed him in jail for increasingly long stints until he finally got sober in 2001.
After he put down the bottle, Downey’s career soared, and he has since landed roles in blockbusters like Tropic Thunder and the Iron Man and Avengers movies.
In 2003, Downey explained pretty simply why he doesn’t drink anymore: “Oh, I don’t drink these days. I am allergic to alcohol and narcotics. I break out in handcuffs.”
In 2022, Downey reflected on the biggest reason for him to have given up drugs and alcohol: his wife, Susan Downey. “It was the clearest conversation I’ve ever had in my life,” he said of their conversation of his drug use. “You know when someone is being so clear with you with something you go, ‘There is zero wiggle room here.’”
He concluded, “Ultimatums work.”
Lucy Hale
On Valentine’s Day in 2023, Pretty Little Liars alum Lucy Hale opened up for the first time about her sobriety. “Bear with me, this is an alternative Valentine’s Day post,” she wrote, alongside a picture of a purple cake with “1 year” written on top. “This is a post about self-love and about the greatest thing I’ve ever done. On January 2, 2023, I celebrated one year of sobriety.”
She continued, “While this journey has mostly been private, I felt compelled tonight to let anyone who is struggling know that you are not alone and you are loved.” What an incredible milestone!
Later that month, Hale talked about her “powerful and painful, insightful, joyous, horrible journey” with sobriety and addiction. In the talk, she remembered the moment she decided to go sober, and why it worked this time around. “I said, ‘I deserve more out of this life. I have to try it a different way,’” she recalled, adding that it was the first time she was making the change for herself, not others.
Adele
In late 2023, Adele shared her decision to stop drinking.
“I stopped drinking maybe like three and a half months ago,” Adele said during a Las Vegas concert, per People. “I mean, I was literally borderline alcoholic for quite a lot of my 20s.”
Anthony Hopkins
Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins announced his sobriety for the first time in a video to Instagram on Dec. 29, 2022.
“I just want to wish you a happy new year, and also to say I’m celebrating 47 years today of sobriety,” the actor began. “I am a recovering alcoholic, and to you out there, know that there are people struggling… Be kind to yourself, be proud of your life.”
The actor then went on to recall the “desperate situation” he was in 47 years ago in which he “probably” did not have “long to live.” He continued, adding that he then realized “there was something really wrong” with him before he knew what addiction even was. “It was a kind of mental, physical condition called alcoholism… addiction,” he said.
Tom Holland
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly in May 2023, Tom Holland revealed that he was one year and four months sober. The Spider-Man actor decided to quit drinking in order to better his mental health after playing the anxious Danny in the Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room.
“Learning about mental health and the power of it, and speaking to psychiatrists about Danny and Billy’s struggles, has been something that has been so informative to my own life,” he said, noting that it helped him to “recognizing triggers” and “things that stress me out,” which apparently included substances.
Elizabeth Hurley
In a recent interview with HollywoodLife, Elizabeth Hurley revealed a plethora of things like advice for wellness, fitness, and more. Within the advice, she discussed how she gave up alcohol to fit her healthy lifestyle.
“You have to drink a lot of water and probably, don’t really, drink much alcohol. I’ve virtually given it up completely. I may have one sip tonight because one of our big benefactors owns fantastic winery, actually in several, in British Columbia, so I may have a sip! But I don’t really drink much alcohol.”
Cara Delevingne
In March 2023, model Cara Delevingne revealed to Vogue that she was four months sober.
“This process obviously has its ups and downs, but I’ve started realizing so much. People want my story to be this after-school special where I just say, ‘Oh look, I was an addict, and now I’m sober and that’s it.’ And it’s not as simple as that,” she explained. “It doesn’t happen overnight…. Of course I want things to be instant—I think this generation especially, we want things to happen quickly—but I’ve had to dig deeper.”
Kelly Ripa
In early 2020, Kelly Ripa opened up about “unintentionally” going sober after doing a sober month with a group of girlfriends.
“I just never went back to it,” she told People. “It wasn’t even really a thought process. It felt great, I felt like I looked great, I felt like I didn’t feel hungover. Not that I was a heavy drinker. I wasn’t someone who got drunk, but even like two glasses of wine at a girl’s night out dinner, I would feel it the next morning.”
“I just didn’t really feel the need or desire to go back to it,” she added. “It wasn’t really a choice or a thought, it was just, ‘Yeah, I guess I don’t drink anymore.'”
Drew Barrymore
In December 2021, Drew Barrymore finally opened up about her choice to cut out alcohol on CBS This Morning.
“I’m gonna say something for the first time in a long time — I have not had a drink of alcohol in two-and-a-half years,” she shared. “It was something that I realized just did not serve me and my life.”
While Barrymore says it started as a “quiet, confident journey,” it’s now “been long enough where I’m in a lifestyle that I know is really working on a high road for my little journey, and there’s so much peace finally being had where there were demons.”
Keith Urban
Country superstar Keith Urban might have looked like he had it all, but he has battled against insecurities his whole life, he says. His personal problems led to years of booze and pills, not to mention three stints in rehab.
“I’d go to sleep, wake up a couple of hours later, go at it again, drinking to take the edge off,” Urban told Rolling Stone. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m probably not going to make it until tomorrow.’ And then I thought, ‘Fuck it. I really don’t care. It’ll be a relief to not have to. I’ll take an Ambien and at some point I’ll pass,'” Urban shares. “I was taking everything. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, good, this is the end of it, yahoo.’ I was quite happy about it.”
Finally, in 2006, his wife, Nicole Kidman, staged an intervention that worked. Urban has been clean and sober ever since.
Michael J. Fox
When actor Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the age of 30, he turned to alcohol for comfort. He had always partied, he said, but his health problem made him drink in order to numb his feelings and escape. His wife, actress Tracy Pollan, intervened a year later with a heart-to-heart talk.
“About a year after my diagnosis, I woke up one morning and saw Tracy’s face,” he said. “She said, ‘Is this what you want?’ Instantly I knew — no, this isn’t what I want or who I am. So I quit drinking in ’92. I recognized I had choices about drinking, and that made me realize I had choices about Parkinson’s as well.”
Fox has been sober for many years now and has continued his successful career, for the last 25 years.
Tobey Maguire
Before he was Spider-Man, Tobey Maguire was an alcoholic. The Hollywood star is candid about his drinking problems, which ended when he got sober at 19.
Maguire credits Alcoholics Anonymous for his successful stint on the wagon. He told Playboy, “It’s just all practical. There are no holes in the program. It’s so, so simple. I come in, I ask for help. It has totally changed my life.”
Chrissy Teigen
Chrissy Teigen has opened up multiple times about her choice to step away from alcohol over the years, first telling Cosmopolitan in 2017 that she was no longer happy with the extent of her alcohol use and sharing social media updates in the years that followed.
In December 2020, she shared that she was “4 weeks sober” and credited the book Quit Like a Woman with inspiring her to stick to her journey.
In 2021, she shared that she was attempting a totally sober trip to Italy in August, announced that she was 50 days sober in September, shared when she reached her 100-days-sober marker, and reflected on spending Thanksgiving sober in November.
Jessica Simpson
To celebrate four years of sobriety, Jessica Simpson shared a photo of herself on Nov. 1, 2017, the day she decided to give up drinking.
“This person in the early morning of Nov 1, 2017 is an unrecognizable version of myself,” she wrote on Instagram. “I had so much self-discovery to unlock and explore…Personally, to do this I needed to stop drinking alcohol because it kept my mind and heart circling in the same direction and quite honestly I was exhausted.”
“There is so much stigma around the word alcoholism or the label of an alcoholic,” she continued. “The real work that needed to be done in my life was to actually accept failure, pain, brokenness, and self sabotage. The drinking wasn’t the issue. I was. I didn’t love myself. I didn’t respect my own power. Today I do.”
Daniel Radcliffe
Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliff started drinking alcohol heavily while filming the Harry Potter franchise and didn’t stop after the last film had wrapped. But after a brief relapse, the British actor hasn’t had a drink since 2014.
“I feel a lot more settled mentally, and am more comfortable with what makes me happy,” Radcliffe told The Fix. “More comfortable with the fact that I am a person that loves just hanging out with my friends. Or watching quiz shows. I am comfortable with the things about myself that I used to think, man, am I really boring? Should I be going out and getting wasted all the time?”
How does he stay sober? Radcliffe says that he used to have to take epic five-hour walks in order to stop his urge to drink. Now, though, a short jog or trip to the gym will do.
Elton John
Elton John doesn’t remember a lot of the 1980s. He was drinking and doing drugs, in large part to battle stress and his shyness. But when the AIDS epidemic hit in the late 1980s, the international superstar knew he had to kick his habits and start taking action. He’s now been sober for over three decades years, though he wrote in his memoir that he still has nightmares several times a week about doing cocaine.
“It took me 16 years of drug addiction and alcoholism to actually have the humility to say, ‘I need help,'” he told Larry King. “Because I figured that, because I was a successful man, I was wealthy, I was, you know, seemingly intelligent — even then I wasn’t intelligent enough to ask for help.”
Eva Mendes
Actress and model Eva Mendes checked into rehab in 2008 to battle her addiction issues. Since then, she’s abstained from drugs and alcohol. Now, as the partner of Ryan Gosling and the mother of two young children, Mendes spends her time practicing transcendental meditation and getting lots of exercise.
She has been quiet about her exact reasons for attending rehab, but she has spoken generally about addiction issues: “The other day I was reading an article. I don’t even remember who the actress was, but she’s been around for a long time. She said something like, ‘I’m proud that I’ve had a whole career without making it to rehab.’ I thought, That’s such a negative twist on it. I’m proud of people who have the determination and the fearlessness to actually go and face their demons and get better. This is a life-or-death situation.”
Rob Lowe
Like many teen actors who become superstars, Rob Lowe found himself struggling with alcoholism and drug addiction a few years after he entered the limelight. Running around Los Angeles with the Brat Pack in the 1980s, Lowe made a string of poor decisions that many wouldn’t be able to bounce back from. Luckily, though, with the help of rehab programs and his wife, Sheryl Berkoff, Lowe has been sober for over 33 years, through an extremely successful and diverse acting career that has spanned everything from West Wing to Wayne’s World.
“Being in recovery has given me everything of value that I have in my life,” Lowe said when he received the Spirit of Sobriety award for being clean for 25 years at the Brent Shapiro Foundation Summer Spectacular. “Integrity, honesty, fearlessness, faith, a relationship with God, and most of all, gratitude. It’s given me a beautiful family and an amazing career. I’m under no illusions where I would be without the gift of alcoholism and the chance to recover from it.”
Blake Lively
The Gossip Girl star isn’t recovering from addiction issues, and staying sober isn’t a struggle for her — she simply doesn’t like the way alcohol tastes or the way it makes her feel. She’d much rather be cooking, eating and spending time with husband Ryan Reynolds than mixing drinks.
“Time and again I play drug addicts with sexual issues. I never knew I had a dark side, but this is clearly where I get it out of my system,” she told OK Magazine. “I don’t drink. I’ve never tried a drug.”
Bradley Cooper
When Bradley Cooper filmed his breakout movie The Hangover, the irony was that he was decidedly sober. The actor hasn’t had a drink since 2004, when he decided to kick a bad habit of alcohol and pills.
“I would never be sitting here with you, no way, no chance,” he said about what would have happened if he hadn’t stopped drinking. “I wouldn’t have been able to have access to myself or other people, or even been able to take in other people, if I hadn’t changed my life. I never would have been able to have the relationships that I do. I never would have been able to take care of my father the way I did when he was sick. So many things.”
What made him face his addiction after many years of alcohol abuse? “I realized I wasn’t going to live up to my potential, and that scared the hell out of me,” the Maestro star said.
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel L. Jackson lost his father to alcoholism, but that didn’t stop the now-superstar actor from turning to drinking and drugs in the 1980s. It was only when his wife and daughter found him passed out on the kitchen floor alongside cocaine that he realized he needed to act. One stint in rehab and a few decades later, he is a household name who has been in every blockbuster from Star Wars to The Avengers.
Jackson attributes his success to his sobriety. The first role after he quit proved to be his first big movie success, Jungle Fever. Ironically, he played a crack cocaine addict in the film, a role he says was cathartic.
Jackson told The Fix that staying sober isn’t easy in Hollywood: “I hang out with people who smoke weed on the golf course, I’ve been in rooms with big plates of cocaine. When I was drinking, nobody offered me fucking Cristal. Now I’ve got bottles of it in my house that people keep giving me.”
Still, the actor hasn’t relapsed since the day he quit.
Russell Brand
Russell Brand, a comedian and actor known for his energy and quirkiness has been sober for more than 20 years, following a decade of drug and alcohol dependence. Russell Brand said that he abused substances to escape reality and that he still struggles to stay sober on a day-to-day basis.
He told the London Observer, “Without abstinence-based recovery, I’m a highly defective individual, prone to self-centeredness, self-pity and self-destructive, grandiose behavior. But if I seek the company and fellowship of other addicts and alcoholics — and, for me, alcoholism is no different from other facets of addiction — then, one day at a time, I have a chance of living free from [addiction]. I wouldn’t be able to do it without that.”
In 2022, Brand celebrated 20 years of sobriety. “I’m 20 years clean and sober today,” he told The Independent at the time. “Thank you to all the people who have helped me to remain clean. It’s never done on your own.”
Colin Farrell
As soon as the filming of Miami Vice wrapped, one of its stars, Colin Farrell, was put directly on a plane and sent to rehab for his drug and alcohol addictions. Years later, the Irish actor is clean, sober and happy with his decision to stop abusing substances.
Farrell said that his drug and alcohol use started when he was just 14 years old and accelerated until he “couldn’t get his foot off the gas.”
He went on to say, “I began to come out of the haze that I was in and had burrowed myself into so deeply. Basically, I’d been fairly drunk or high since I was 14, so it was a tough life change, and I was dying. I’m one of the lucky ones.”
As for the partying, hell-raising lifestyle he left behind? “I don’t take it for granted and I don’t undermine how difficult my journey to getting sober was,” he told The Telegraph in 2014, “but now I’m in a really different life and I don’t miss it. I’m very lucky in that respect because I know people who have had a longer period of sobriety than me and they still miss it every day and it’s a struggle for them.”
Eminem
For years, rapper Eminem wrote songs about drinking and taking drugs. He was also heavily addicted to alcohol and painkillers, sometimes taking up to 40 pills a day, washed down with drinks. When a 2007 overdose left him in the ER with his organs shutting down, he decided that enough was enough, and, after a brief relapse, he got clean for good.
The rapper once sai that quitting saved his life and that the only way he stays clean is through exercise. He told Men’s Journal, “When I got out of rehab, I needed to lose weight, but I also needed to figure out a way to function sober. Unless I was blitzed out of my mind, I had trouble sleeping. So I started running. It gave me a natural endorphin high, but it also helped me sleep, so it was perfect. It’s easy to understand how people replace addiction with exercise.”
Macklemore
Macklemore is another rapper who has bucked rap culture and decided to abstain from drinking and drugs. The Seattle-based musician began drinking at 13 or 14 and spent the next 10 years struggling with substances while trying to succeed as a rapper. He finally went to rehab and got sober in 2008, a move that eventually led to his commercial success.
But, as with so many celebrities, the stress and pressure of fame caused him to fall off the wagon, which he did in between the release of his first and second albums. Starting a family — and realizing he needed to be sober to create — got him back to a life free of drinking and drugs.
Macklemore told Rolling Stone that AA helps him keep on track. “It’s very important to go into the rooms of AA, smell the shitty coffee and be reminded that without sobriety, I would have no career,” he said.
Melanie Griffith
Iconic actress Melanie Griffith has been sober for many years — an accomplishment that she tracks on an iPhone app for those who have chosen abstinence.
Her struggle was a long one. She first checked into rehab in 1988, then again in 2000 and 2008. Her final 90-day stay in rehab took place when her two daughters finally got her the message that she needed to get healthy.
Griffith says that her addiction issues go all the way back to her tough childhood when she would try to fill a lack of love with substances. “I was never loved unconditionally,” she said, per People. “Coke, booze give you a feeling, a physical sensation… a buzz inside your body that takes the place of something you should have had when you were a child.”
Nicole Richie
As a child of megastar Lionel Richie, Nicole Richie grew up having it all. Unfortunately though, having it all included a partying lifestyle, boredom and a lack of limits. The reality television star says she was addicted to cocaine by age 18 and that she also struggled with prescription pills, alcohol and heroin.
Richie’s rock bottom came in 2006, when she was pulled over for driving while intoxicated and sentenced to jail. Though she didn’t serve much time due to prison overcrowding, it did motivate her to get clean and stay that way. She’s been substance-free since 2010.
“I’m happy for the things I have accomplished,” she told People. “I’m happy I’m not in that state anymore.”
Jada Pinkett Smith
Actress Jada Pinkett Smith never dealt with the big problems that can come along with alcohol addiction, such as prison or health scares. But when she was 33, she suddenly realized after a boozy night that she was a problem drinker who wanted to stop. She went cold turkey and hasn’t had a drink since then.
In 2021, she opened up about her bad her addiction had been since high school. “Drinking red wine for me was like drinking glasses of water,” she said in an episode of Red Table Talk, per Entertainment Tonight. “Because I’m used to that hard hit. I was drinking hard in high school, too, and when I got out here I was doing cocktails. So, ecstasy, alcohol, weed. Let me tell you, I was having myself a little ball.”
“Once I was going for that third bottle of wine, I said, ‘You’ve got a problem,’ and it was cold turkey that day,” she recalled. “That day I just stopped.”
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