The 'Roseanne' star says he's been sober now for 10 years.
John Goodman has been sober now for 10 years, but the road to recovery wasn't always easy.
In an interview for this weekend's Sunday Today With Willie Geist, the Roseanne star opens up about his battle with alcoholism and how it affected his work.
“I got so lucky because I was still getting hired for things, but the fact is I was drinking at work,” Goodman recalls. “My speech would be slurred. I thought I was fooling people. My cheeks would turn bright red when I was liquored up. I just looked like a stop sign.”
The 65-year-old actor said a long weekend of pretending to play golf with his friends was a "tipping point" for him.
“I had to go accept an Emmy award. So I missed the rehearsal because I was drunk. And then by the time Sunday morning rolled around, I was shaking. I was still drinking, but I was still shaking,” he recounts. “I had the clarity of thought that I needed to be hospitalized.”
Goodman says he called his wife, Anna Beth Goodman, and jokes that, to him, that was “like turning myself into the Gestapo.”
“She made some phone calls,” he continues. “She got me into a treatment center, and I detoxed there and decided I liked the feeling. And it’s been 10 years.”
Earlier this week, Goodman also shared on SiriusXM's The Howard Stern Show that his TV wife, Roseanne Barr, also played a part in sobering him up.
“She was scared for me, but she was more confrontational,” he said, noting that she talked to him directly about his drinking problem. “She’d already had a husband go through the process.”
Barr, who was also on the radio show, added, "It’s hard to watch."
Here's more with Barr and Goodman, who just made their return to TV this week:
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