Denzel Washington opens up about a decade of sobriety amidst the Gladiator 2 premiere

Denzel Washington revealed that his dangerous habits started with wine. "Wine is very tricky. It’s very slow. It ain’t like, boom, all of a sudden," he said in the interview.

The actor explained: "I never got strung out on heroin. Never got strung out on coke. Never got strung out on hard drugs. I shot dope just like they shot dope, but I never got strung out. And I never got strung out on liquor. I had this ideal idea of wine tastings and all that—which is what it was at first. And that’s a very subtle thing."

Washington admitted that he owned a huge wine cellar and often spent thousands of dollars on precious bottles. "I learned to drink the best. So I’m gonna drink my ’61s and my ’82s and whatever we had. Wine was my thing, and now I was popping $4,000 bottles just because that’s what was left," he reminisced, adding that he could drink two bottles a day. In the same conversation, he noted that he never drank while working on set.

Washington stopped drinking in December 2014, shortly after his 60th birthday. "I've done a lot of damage to the body. We'll see. I've been clean," he admitted, pondering over the past.

In the interview, Denzel Washington also took a moment for a rather sad reflection. The actor turns 70 in a month.

"This is the last chapter—if I get another thirty, what do I want to do?" he said, thoughtfully. His mother lived to be 97, so he has a right to believe he has good genes.

Recently, Denzel stirred up some buzz. In one of the interviews, he said that a scene involving a gay kiss, in which he allegedly starred, was cut from the new "Gladiator." Meanwhile, director Ridley Scott denies everything. He said bluntly: "No, that’s b-------."