David Morrissey has revealed how crippling social anxiety drove him to alcoholism, and a desperate late-night call to a friend in AA saved his life 21 years ago.
The 61-year-old actor – known for his roles in acclaimed dramas Sherwood and The Walking Dead, plus the comedy series Daddy Issues with Aimee Lou Wood – said his drinking stemmed from watching his father Joe slowly deteriorate from a burst ulcer.
Joe’s decline robbed them of the close relationship they might otherwise have had before his death, aged 54, at their Liverpool home when Morrissey was 15.
Speaking on today’s Desert Island Discs, the actor said drinking had started as a way of managing social situations before spiralling beyond his control.
‘I had this terrible social anxiety and that helped me get through it,’ he said. ‘But later on I couldn’t stop. I was on my own in the pub. That was really hard, and very hard for my ex-wife and people around me.’
He got sober after making a late-night call to a former colleague he knew was in AA and whose number he had kept for two years.
‘He came round my house and just sat with me,’ he told host Lauren Laverne. ‘I’ve not drank since that day. It’s been tough. When I stopped drinking, I didn’t stop being an alcoholic.
‘My behaviour was still very self-destructive for many years. I’m always looking for an exit strategy in every situation.’
Actor David Morrissey (left), pictured with Aimee Lou Wood (right) has revealed how crippling social anxiety drove him to alcoholism, but that a desperate late-night call to a friend in AA saved his life
Morrissey said the theatre had offered him his first refuge, even attending evening workshops at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre on the day his father died and on the day of the funeral, explaining that it rescued him from the turmoil.
The father of three spoke with regret about not having had an ‘adult relationship’ with his own dad, and about his failure to support his grieving mother in the months that followed, noticing how she was ‘drained of everything, of any vitality’ but not talking to her about it.
He traced his love of acting to, as a child, watching an episode of the 1970s drama Colditz in which a character pretended to go mad in order to escape captivity.
‘That troubled me,’ he said. ‘I identified with him, his situation; and that thing that bubbled up inside me, I wanted to find out how to control it or understand it.
‘I went looking for acting, I went looking for a way out. And when I walked into the door of the Everyman Youth Theatre, I found it.’
Morrissey left home at 16 to join a touring theatre company.
‘When I’m in work, I feel safe – not necessarily in control, but I feel it’s where I should be,’ he said.
‘In my life I’m less confident. For a long time I was telling myself I wasn’t enough, and that added to the alcoholism.’
l Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 10am and is available via BBC Sounds.
