Back From the Depths, Rebuilding a Career - NY Times
(David P.)
Back From the Depths, Rebuilding a Career
By Patrick Healy: February 7, 2010
Sitting in the Off Broadway theater where he has begun
to put his career back together, in the new play “Venus
in Fur,” the actor Wes Bentley takes a deep breath, leans
forward in his seat, and starts answering the obvious
question: What happened to him after the film “American
Beauty”? Eleven years ago Mr. Bentley was a 21-year-old
Juilliard dropout living in Los Angeles with a Polaroid
for a head shot and not enough money to eat at Taco Bell.
But after his performance as the stoner-voyeur Ricky Fitts
in “American Beauty,” which won the Academy Award for best
picture, he was riding in limos and drawing paparazzi.
Admiring film critics were forecasting a bright future for
him. “I wanted fame, but I thought it'd be incremental, &
I became afraid of the overnight-sensation thing,” Bentley
said, speaking to a reporter about his life since “American
Beauty,” after a decade of keeping his own secrets. “I
started walking into rooms, and everyone would look at me,
& I would freeze up. People kept saying, ‘You have to find
your next movie,’ and that didn’t make life any better.”
His is both a familiar & cautionary Hollywood tale. After
his initial success, Mr. Bentley said, he turned to drugs
and alcohol to cope with the stardom that he was unprepared
for, & then addiction took over his life for several years.
The son of two United Methodist ministers in Arkansas, Mr.
Bentley said he abandoned the spirituality of his youth and
turned to partying in a group house that he shared with the
actors Brad Rowe and Chad Lindberg, among others. Soon his
recreational use of marijuana and alcohol, which began as a
teenager, exploded into cocaine and Ecstasy & other pills.
Eventually heroin had him completely. One of Mr. Bentley’s
housemates at the time, Tony Zierra, a budding director,
caught some of this chaos on tape for a film about his
friends trying to make names for themselves. “The house
became completely swept up in the Hollywood machine, & for
Wes it was very overwhelming,” said Mr. Zierra, whose first
attempt at the film fell apart but is now trying to finish
a new edit, with the title “My Big Break.” “It happened too
fast, Wes was too young, and there was money & free time &
this sense among Wes and others that once they got their
break, the jobs and scripts would just keep coming.”
“American Beauty” opened the door for Mr. Bentley to many
other opportunities, like talking to the director Gus Van
Sant in 1999 about starring in “Brokeback Mountain” before
Ang Lee was chosen to direct it. But when he wasn’t working,
Bentley’s drug use escalated. In 2000 he won a lead role in
“The Four Feathers,” which involved exhausting shoots in
London and Africa. The movie was released to poor reviews
in 2002, by which time Mr. Bentley was back in Los Angeles
and his drug use was accelerating. He would spend nights
doing cocaine at clubs, then sleep until 5 p.m. Eventually
his friends, concerned about him, refused to join in, & he
would drive around the city alone in search of heroin. He
said he spent days in drug dens. At the same time, he said,
he had “stacks of scripts, great scripts with great offers
attached,” that he'd never read because of his addiction.
(His longtime manager, Van Johnson, declined to comment for
this article, saying his company did not allow him to speak
about clients.)
From '02-'09, Bentley said, he stopped caring about acting,
& only did the occasional film for money to pay bills or buy
drugs. In '01 he married Jennifer Quanz, an aspiring actress
he met at his group house 2 years earlier, but their relation-
ship frayed as he hid his drug use and disappeared for hours
or days. He moved out of their home in 2006 and holed up in
a new apartment, doing drugs pretty much full time. (He and
Ms. Quanz are in the process of divorcing.) In '08 Bentley
was arrested and pleaded guilty to heroin possession and to
trying to pass a counterfeit $100 bill. He was mandated to
community service and counseling and 12-step programs, but
he relapsed. He continued using heroin until he was broke,
he said, and began trying to get sober until finally, back
in Los Angeles after a vacation, he hit his bottom last July.
“I had come back to L.A. for something, and I drank a whole
bottle of Scotch, and I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to die
in this hotel room with this bottle of Scotch,’ ” he said.
“It was after that I told a friend for the first time: ‘I’m
a drug addict, & an alcoholic, & I need help. I need help or
I’m going to die.’ ”
Bentley briefly entered a rehab program & began attending
12-step program meetings on his own, which he said he still
does. He said that he was now 7-months sober & wanted to
share his story in the hope that he might help other young
actors who are overwhelmed by success. He readily acknow-
ledged that there's a self-serving aspect to disclosing his
story. “I want to earn more work because I’m doing good
work,” he said, “but people were questioning if I was even
in shape to do auditions. Telling my story is a way to say,
‘I’m O.K., things are better.’ ” Not that Bentley believes
that he's poised, at this point, to reclaim the stardom of
a decade ago. “Venus in Fur” opened last month at the Classic
Stage Co. to generally positive reviews — and was recently
extended through March 7 — but it was his co-star, Nina
Arianda, who earned the raves. Reviewing the production in
The New York Times, Charles Isherwood wrote that Bentley was
effective in some scenes but, compared with Ms. Arianda, was
“a less forceful stage presence, although his piercing eyes
suggest the possibility of simmering depths.”
Walter Bobbie, the director of “Venus in Fur,” said that he
was pleased with Bentley’s performance, & that it was not
lessened by Ms. Arianda’s star turn. “I don’t think anyone
wins like this by himself or herself,” he said of his two
cast members. Mr. Bobbie said he had heard inklings about
Bentley’s personal problems before his audition but was
impressed with his enthusiasm for the play, which some other
actors had been leery of because of the unflattering turns
that the character takes. “We needed a man of genuine
effortless sexuality & confidence, & Wes delivered that,”
Mr. Bobbie said. “As for Wes’s personal life, I’ve always
believed that you never make a decision based on rumor. You
meet a person and make your own history with them.” Bentley
said he wanted to be in “Venus in Fur” as soon as he read
the script, but he was also just as eager to get any work,
even if it paid pennies compared with film. As for sobriety,
he emphasized that he was still at an early stage, & that he
knew his own story might not be enough to sway a full-blown
addict. Still, he said, he wished that when he was in his
early 20s he had heard a story like his own. “This would
have helped me, at least, if someone would have made me
realize that you don’t need to do drugs to be artistic and
express yourself,” Mr. Bentley said. “If you want to be
artistic, if you want to be creative, if you want to express
yourself, you can’t let things get in your way, & drugs are
included in that.”
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