Toward the start of his new stream-of-consciousness essay in Esquire that details "the moments that mattered and the experiences that made him," Oscar-winner Denzel Washington notes he "wasn't big" on alcohol as a youth. That changed down the road. The 69-year-old Training Day and Gladiator II actor recalls how, after he lost the best actor Academy Award for Hurricane to Kevin Spacey for his role in American Beauty in 2000, "I'm sure I went home and drank that night. I had to." Wine soon became Washington's "thing," which he says was enabled by the 10,000-bottle wine cellar he and his wife, Pauletta, had added to a home they built in 1999. "I learned to drink the best," he writes, adding he "was popping $4,000 bottles just because that's what was left."
He would also order wine from a local liquor store two bottles at a time. When his wife asked why two bottles, Washington said he told her, "Because if I order more, I'll drink more. So I kept it to two bottles, and I would drink them both over the course of the day." Though Washington insists he never got "strung out" on alcohol or on the drugs he dabbled in, he notes, "I've done a lot of damage to the body." He writes that he stopped drinking and drugging a decade ago and "haven't had a thimble's worth since." It's a change for the better, he notes. "Things are opening up for me now—like being 70," he writes. "It's real. And it's OK. This is the last chapter—if I get another 30, what do I want to do? My mother made it to 97." (Read more from Washington here.)
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