Tom Hanks: "I have left many wonderful, loving, friendly atmospheres without ever looking back, without thinking, things were really wonderful back then, I wish I was back there.."
Philip Seymour Hoffman on getting sober at 22:
In this interview, Hoffman is asked about his decision to stop drinking and using drugs.
The interviewer notes he went into rehab early, at 25. Hoffman corrects him.
"I got sober. I was 22 years old."
When asked whether it was drugs or alcohol, he doesn't hedge:
"Yes. All that stuff. Anything I get my hands on. I liked it all."
Then the interviewer asks the real question:
Why did he decide to stop?
His answer comes down to a single word, repeated:
"You get panicked. You get panicked. I was 22 and I got panicked for my life."
He's careful not to dramatise it.
But he explains what that panic was really about. It wasn't abstract. It was the fear that the life he wanted was slipping out of reach:
"Whatever I was doing made me worry if I was going to be able to do the things I wanted to do with my life. And I was putting myself in situations and predicaments that were dangerous."
What stayed with him, even years later, was the clarity of that moment at 22:
"I do remember thinking there's things I want to do, you know, there's things I want to do and I'm not going to do them. If I keep doing this, it's not going to happen."