Jonah Hex star, Wes Bentley admits drug addiction

[HMG] – If you’ve seen the new Josh Brolin / Megan Fox thriller, Jonah Hex, you’ll have noticed Wes Bentley as Lusk. And no-one is happier to be there than Wes — it’s his first film in ten years after beating a double addiction.

In 1999 the Arkansas native was a 21-year old Julliard drop-out, living on fast-food, with a Polaroid as a headshot. Then came his role as ‘Ricky Fitts’ in ‘American Beauty.’

Within weeks he was riding in limos, besieged by the press, and critics were making up new ways just to praise him.

But Wes found that too much.

“I wanted fame,” he tells the Huff Post. “But I thought it would be incremental. I was afraid of the ‘overnight-sensation’ thing. “I started walking into rooms and everyone would look – and I’d freeze up. People also kept saying, ‘You have to find your next movie,’ which didn’t make life any better.”

Wes softened these pressures with some booze and  the occasional joint; That quickly led to ecstasy pills, and the downward slide was complete when heroin caught Wes in its life-shredding grasp.

He spent most of the last decade doing cocaine in night clubs, sleeping until 5pm, and only taking occasional film roles to pay for his incessant habit. In September 2001 he also married the actress Jennifer Quanz, but still kept his addictions a secret.

Last month, he filed for divorce.

But Wes truly hit bottom in 2008 — Arrested for possession of heroin he was ordered to undergo a 12-step program. But he still kept using drugs until he was broke. Last Summer he finally confessed to a friend;

“I’d come back to LA, and I drank a whole bottle of Scotch and thought, ‘I’m going to die in this hotel room with this bottle,’” he recalls. “It was after that I told a friend, ‘I’m a drug addict and an alcoholic, and I need help or I’m going to die.’”

The help came, and Wes has now been clean for almost a year. In January he returned to acting in an off-Broadway play called ‘Venus in Fur,’ for which he won upbeat reviews. Now ‘Jonah Hex’ is drawing the crowds and Wes is on his way back. And he knows it;

“You don’t need to do drugs to be artistic and express yourself,” he counsels. “If you want to be artistic or creative, you can’t let things get in your way, and drugs are included in that.”

Amen! Now, could someone tell that to Jeremy London?…