The Ant-Man actor spoke with Page Six on his path to sobriety and his most recent movie, Boston Strangler. David Dastmalchian is thinking back on his twenty years of sobriety. At the New York premiere of his new film Boston Strangler, the 47-year-old Ant-Man star opened up and discussed his current situation.
which includes 20 years of abstinence following a five-year heroin addiction prior to his acting career. The actor said to the source, “If nothing else, the unending stream of gratitude that I feel for the past two decades of this journey, living without drugs and alcohol, completely inspires all the work that I do as an actor and think about the characters I want to bring to life.
David Dastmalchian used an “amazing set of books and material that exists” to assist portray the story in his new movie, in which he plays the alleged Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo. The actor previously disclosed to The Hollywood Reporter in 2018 that he self-medicated for his “undiagnosed depression issues” in high school by using drugs.
He became addicted to heroin while attending DePaul University in Chicago, and at his lowest moment, he was living out of his car. When composing the 2014 movie Animals, Dastmalchian drew on his own experience with heroin addiction. He went through rehab, a halfway house, and a psychiatric center on his own personal road to sobriety.
He told NME in 2021 that receiving the mental health therapy he need was his biggest achievement and that a large part of it was his 19 years of sobriety. “So even if there aren’t any victory flags or anything of the sort, I’m still working on it. It’s a daily struggle, but I would say that even if I were to sit here with you right now and watch you consume two bottles of wine, I wouldn’t feel the want to join you.
I have a lot of friends who use marijuana, so it’s not difficult for me to socialize with them because I don’t want to. Yet, if that [lack of desire] returned the following day, I am fully aware of the meeting I must attend and the people I must call to ensure my safety.”
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This week, Dastmalchian reconnected with him to talk about his most recent movie, in particular the “heavy-duty burden” of portraying the alleged Boston Strangler. The performer “approached the performance extremely gingerly, and I made the decision going in to do as much absolute study as I could do,” the actor said in his explanation.
DeSalvo admitted to the crimes—the 1962–1964 murders of 13 women—even though he was never indicted with the Boston Strangler killings. Albert DeSalvo, who passed away in 1973, was connected to the crimes by Genetic evidence found in 2013 by Boston police.
And as the movie shows, there are still many unanswered questions surrounding the case. Yet, Dastmalchian argued, “it’s a heavy-duty responsibility because you’re delivering a story that is based on true events and there are genuine victims.
You must understand what you are doing and why you are doing it. For a “story about women who are fighting to tell women’s stories in an environment where the power structure doesn’t want those stories completely told,” as Dastmalchian put it.
The film also stars Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon as real-life Boston Record-American reporters Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole. In addition to Chris Cooper, Alessandro Nivola, Morgan Spector, and Bill Camp, Boston Strangler is currently available for streaming on Hulu.