Actors often portray characters much younger or much older than they really are. They also have very different personalities and behave differently from the characters they portray.
Such is the case for 29-year-old Cory Monteith. On Fox’s hit series, “Glee,” he plays the high school jock who is a nice guy, Finn Hudson. The 29-year-old seems so natural playing a teenager you are led to believe that maybe Finn Hudson is close to the adolescent he was growing up.
Teen Gone Wild
The handsome actor claims to have regularly cut class in favor of drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana. Fueled by his alcoholic and drug-addicted behavior, Montieth made another bad decision when instead of quitting drugs and alcohol, he quit high school for good at age 16 (after attending a number of schools and an alternative program for troubled teens).
In his own words his drug use was, “anything and everything, as much as possible.”
Cory’s mother and friends were terrified by the small screen star’s destructive path. Fearing his habits would cost him his life, the group staged an intervention for Cory when he was 19 years old.
Drugs, Alcohol and Theft!
Like his attempts to finish high school, Cory dabbled in and out of rehab programs, always returning to his old ways. Cory’s actions finally caught up with him after he stole “a significant amount of money” from a member of his family.
Like many addicts who deep down decide they are tired of being a drug addict, his behavior became ever-more reckless. In an interview with Parade Magazine (June 26, 2011) he said, “I knew I was going to get caught, but I was so desperate I didn’t care.” “It was a cry for help. I was confronted and I said, ‘Yeah, it was me.’ It was the first honorable, truthful thing that had come out of my mouth in years.”
The family member he stole from gave the actor two choices: sober up, or the theft would be reported to the police and charges would be pressed. Cory opted to stop “fighting” himself, and set out to get clean.
After relocating to a small Canadian town (Nanaimo) to live with a family friend, he quit using drugs and became a roofer. Cory dabbled in acting, and after performing a scene about a suicidal man, finally felt a sense of pride from “working had and being good at something.”
“I don’t want kids to think it’s okay to drop out of school and get high, and they’ll be famous actors, too,” Cory explained of why he chose to speak out about his troubled past. “But for those people who might give up: Get real about what you want and go after it. If I can, anyone can.” Maybe he should also suggest that kids take a minor in possession class to learn more about alcohol abuse.