Runners-up: actors William Shatner, Tatum O’Neal and Kirsten Dunst
“Star Trek”to “T.J. Hooker”to “Boston Legal”star William Shatner, 77, who has come clean about his alcoholism (apparently some two decades after getting sober) and tumultuous life with his wife Nerine Shatner, who he found drowned in their pool in 1999 with “huge levels”of alcohol and Valium in her system. “Star Trek”co-star Leonard Nimoy, also a recovering alcoholic, told Shatner just before he married Nerine, “Bill, you do know that Nerine is an alcoholic.”When Shatner responded, “I know she is, but I love her,”Nimoy responded, “Well, Bill, then you are in for a rough ride.”Nerine was apparently sober for a time before they married, but after going to bed that night “ecstatic,”he woke up at 8 a.m. and found her drunk. “Later, I found she had hidden bottles of vodka all over the house.”She went to rehab three times while she was with Shatner, who stayed with her even after she almost killed his daughter while driving drunk (he fit an “immobilizer”to her car so she couldn’t drive while intoxicated). “I thought, stupidly, that I could heal her.â€
He should have known better. According to Nimoy, Shatner kept his own alcoholism completely hidden from the cast while making “Star Trek”in the late ‘60s. Since his fellow actors heaped “caustic criticism”on him when he interviewed them for his book (Star Trek Memories) in the early ‘90s, those with a grasp of the behavioral symptoms of alcoholism might have concluded the odds of Shatner having the disease were about 80%. It was widely reported that Shatner was “devastated”to learn his peers disliked him intensely and accused him of being “utterly self-absorbed,”giving no support to fellow cast members. A tip of the hat to the former center of the universe, Mr. Shatner and shame on Nerine’s friends, who resented you after referring to her as an alcoholic shortly after the tragedy. If we don’t call a spade a spade, we’ll never learn what one looks like.
Actress Tatum O’Neal, who chronicled her long-standing addiction in her 2005 memoir, “A Paper Life,” busted for cocaine possession with two bags in her pants pocket. She reportedly told police that the drug buy was part of her research for an upcoming part as a junkie. Sure, and she consumes only two drinks a night, too”so long as they’re 28 ounce Long Island iced teas.
“Spiderman”co-star Kirsten Dunst, who claims she was in rehab at Sundance, Utah’s Cirque Lodge for depression. A spokesman for Cirque coyly told reporters that they address “chemical dependency issues [and] if someone is suffering solely from chronic depression, we’re not the place to go.”Dunst, who joked with talk show host Jay Leno in 2005 that she might end up in rehab after being reported by friends to have been “drinking up a storm at clubs and parties,”admitted to having no room for food in her refrigerator”just lots of Veuve Clicquot and other alcohol.