In his memoirs, Tom Felton spoke openly about his previous struggle with addiction.
The Harry Potter The star revealed that in his twenties he “found himself drinking as an escape” and spent a lot of time in dives around Los Angeles, noting that these problems often affected his professional life as well.
“Drinking becomes a habit under the best of circumstances,” Felton writes in More than the magic wand: The magic and chaos of growing up as a wizard. “If you drink to escape a situation, even more so. The habit spilled over beyond the bar and from time to time onto the set.”
Felton continues, “It got to the point where I thought nothing of drinking on the job. I showed up unprepared and wasn’t the professional I wanted to be. But the alcohol wasn’t the problem. It was the symptom.”
Mike Marsland/Getty Images “Harry Potter” star Tom Felton describes his battle with drug abuse and his escape from rehab in his memoirs
Things came to a head when Felton’s agent, manager, lawyer and ex-girlfriend Jade Olivia intervened and hatched a plan to send him to rehab. “Everyone in the room had written me a letter,” he recalled. “I listened to Jade and the others tell me how concerned they were about my behavior, my drinking and my drug abuse. I was in no state to listen to them.”
One letter, however, “hit him the hardest.” It came from his lawyer, the person in the room he “knew the least.” Felton recalled, “My lawyer, whom I had hardly ever met in person, spoke with calm honesty. ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘I don’t know you very well, but you seem like a nice guy. I just want to tell you that this is the seventeenth intervention I’ve been to in my career. Eleven of them are now dead. Don’t be the twelfth.'”
His words “pierced” Felton’s anger and denial. The road to recovery was rocky. Felton checked into a rehabilitation facility in Malibu, where nurses asked him if he would prefer to use an alias on his name tag, given his Harry Potter Fame. “If people recognize me from the Harry Potter movies, it’s because of my face,” Felton replied. “You could write ‘Mickey Fucking Mouse’ on my chest and they wouldn’t think I’m him.”
Grand Central Publishing “Beyond the Wand” by Tom Felton
The actor also reported that he fled the facility toward the Pacific Coast Highway less than 24 hours after checking in. Felton later wrote, “Suddenly, the frustration erupted out of me. I was, I realize now, completely sober for the first time in ages, and had an overwhelming sense of clarity and anger. I began screaming at God, screaming at heaven, at everyone and no one, full of rage at what had happened to me, at the situation I was in. I screamed at the top of my lungs at the sky and the sea. I screamed until I had let it all out and could scream no more.”
Some time later, Felton checked into another rehab facility, but was kicked out again after he was found in a woman’s room. Another stay in rehab helped him get back on his feet. “I’m not the only one who feels this way,” he wrote. “Just as we all have physical problems at some point in our lives, we all have mental problems. There’s no shame in that. It’s not a sign of weakness. And one of the reasons I decided to write these pages is in the hope that by sharing my experiences, I might be able to help someone who is struggling.”
“I’m no longer afraid to raise my hands and say, ‘I’m not OK,'” he continued. “To this day, I don’t know what version of myself I’m going to wake up with. That brings us back to the concept of rehab and the stigma attached to the word. I don’t want to portray the idea of therapy as harmless by any means – it’s a difficult first step – but I want to do my part to normalize it. I think we all need it in one form or another, so why shouldn’t it be normal to be open about how we feel?”
More than the magic wand: The magic and chaos of growing up as a wizard is available wherever books are sold.
Want more movie news? Sign up for Weekly entertainmentFree newsletter from to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, movie reviews and more.
Related content:
