Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumaniaactor David Dastmalchian opened up about his journey of sobriety after being an addict for five years.
Dastmalchian, 47, revealed that he is nothing but grateful to be twenty years sober. The Ant-Man star, who struggled with heroin addiction for five years before becoming an actor, said that his sobriety informs his work.
“For nothing else, the endless pool of gratitude that I feel for the past two decades of this journey, living without drugs and alcohol, absolutely informs all the work that I do as an actor and think about the characters I want to bring to life,” he told Page Six exclusively on Tuesday at the New York premiere of his latest film, Boston Strangler.
Dastmalchian, first started taking drugs in high school, but his addiction increased while he was studying theater at DePaul University in Chicago.
As he graduated, he became homeless and lived in his car for two years. The Teacher actor later kicked-off his journey towards sobriety when his family enrolled him into a psychiatric facility, after that the actor got into a rehab and then a sober house.
In Boston Strangler, he plays a serial killer Albert DeSalvo, who purportedly confessed to the murder of 13 women from 1962 to 1964 in Boston.
Dastmalchian revealed that he studied DeSalvo’s life deeply in order to prepare to take on this role.
"There’s an incredible series of books and research that exists, so I just dove in as soon as I found out I was going to be bringing this character to life — and please believe me, this was no small undertaking on my part," he told Page Six.
"I don’t take it lightly for a second the importance of bringing to life someone who inflicted pain on so many people — and who was a real person who had a great deal of pain inflicted on himself" he added.