Jamie Lee Curtis Says She Once 'Did Cocaine and Freebased' with Dad Tony Curtis Before Sobriety
Jamie Lee Curtis is getting candid about her battle with addiction, and the hold it had on her relationship with her late father, Tony Curtis.
Curtis, 60, appears on the cover of Variety‘s recovery issue, where she talks about her journey to sobriety and the years she was addicted to drugs, including opioids.
“I knew my dad had an issue because I had an issue and he and I shared drugs,” Curtis admitted. “There was a period of time where I was the only child that was talking to him. I had six siblings. I have five. My brother, Nicholas, died of a heroin overdose when he was 21 years old.”
RELATED: Jamie Lee Curtis Opens Up About Opioid Addiction She Hid for 10 Years: ‘No One Knew’
She continued, “But I shared drugs with my dad. I did cocaine and freebased once with my dad. But that was the only time I did that, and I did that with him. He did end up getting sober for a short period of time and was very active in recovery for about three years. It didn’t last that long. But he found recovery for a minute.”
Tony later died in 2010 of a cardiac arrest after suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for years. He was 85.
Curtis opened up to PEOPLE about her 10-year opioid addiction last year.
The actress said she was prescribed opiates for the first time in 1989 after minor plastic surgery “for my hereditary puffy eyes.” She spent the next decade getting painkillers any way she could. She even stole pills from friends and family, including her older sister Kelly, who was the first person to find out about her addiction in 1998.
“I was ahead of the curve of the opiate epidemic,” Curtis said in the cover story. “I had a 10-year run, stealing, conniving. No one knew. No one.”
Curtis attended her first recovery meeting in February 1999. She told her husband of 33 years, actor-director Christopher Guest, about her addiction that day. The couple has two kids: daughter Annie, 31; and son Tom, 22.
“I’m breaking the cycle that has basically destroyed the lives of generations in my family,” Curtis says. “Getting sober remains my single greatest accomplishment… bigger than my husband, bigger than both of my children and bigger than any work, success, failure. Anything.”
The veteran actress has been sober for nearly 20 years and said she continues to attend meetings.
Her new film Knives Out opens Nov. 27.
