'Harry Potter' Star Tom Felton Details Substance Abuse Struggles, Rehab Visits

Tom Felton, who starred as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, wrote about the darkest chapters of his life in his new memoir. Felton, 35, said he spent much of his 20s "drinking to escape" in Los Angeles, and it led to trouble in his career. Felton also went to rehab but escaped the first one before finally finding a facility that helped him.

"Drinking becomes a habit at the best of times," Felton wrote in Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, via Entertainment Weekly. "When you're drinking to escape a situation, even more so. The habit spilled out of the bar and, from time to time, on to set."

It got so bad that Felton could not stop thinking about drinking while working. He would show up unprepared. "The alcohol, though, wasn't the problem," he wrote. "It was the symptom."

Felton's agents, managers, lawyer, and his former girlfriend Jade Olivia staged an intervention. They also sent him to rehab. "Everybody in the room had written me a letter," Felton wrote. "I listened to Jade and the others as they told me how concerned they were about my behavior, about my drinking, and my substance abuse. I was in no state to hear them."

Surprisingly, the letter that hit him the "hardest" was from his lawyer, the one person he knew the least outside of a professional setting. The lawyer told Felton that this was the 17th intervention he had been a part of, and 11 of those clients are now dead. "Don't be the twelfth," the lawyer told Felton. 

The actor agreed to go to rehab, but his time at the first facility began rocky. When he checked into the Malibu facility, the nurses asked him if he wanted to use an alias on his name tag because of his fame. "If people recognize me from the Harry Potter films it'll be because of my face," Felton told the nurse. "You could write 'Mickey F—ing Mouse' on my chest and they're not going to think I'm him."

After less than a day in the facility, Felton escaped and ran towards the Pacific Coast Highway. He experienced an "overwhelming sense of clarity and fury" after being sober for the first time in years. "I started screaming at God, at the sky, at everyone and no one, full of fury for what had happened to me, for the situation in which I found myself," Felton wrote. "I yelled, full-lung, at the sky and the ocean. I yelled until I'd let it all out, and I couldn't yell anymore."

Felton's second rehab stint was short too since he was kicked out when he was found in a woman's room. His third rehab visit helped him get on track though. The experiences helped him realize there is "no shame" in facing mental health struggles. "It's not a sign of weakness," he wrote. "And part of the reason that I took the decision to write these pages is the hope that by sharing my experiences, I might be able to help someone else who is struggling."

Today, Felton is "no longer shy" of telling people when he is not feeling well. "To this day I never know which version of myself I'm going to wake up to," Felton wrote. "Which takes us back to the concept of rehab, and the stigma attached to the word. By no means do I want to casualize the idea of therapy – it's a difficult first step to take-but I do want to do my bit to normalize it. I think we all need it in one shape or another, so why wouldn't it be normal to talk openly about how we're feeling?"

Beyond the Wand is now in bookstores. Felton also performed the audio-book version. His most recent movie, Save the Cinema, was released in the U.K. earlier this year. Felton was among the former Harry Potter stars who appeared in the HBO Max special Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts.

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse or addiction, please call the National Drug Helpline at (844) 289-0879.