Jason Bateman Says He Got Sober After His Wife Called His Partying ‘Annoyingly Unpredictable’
Jason Bateman Says He Got Sober After His Wife Called His Partying ‘Annoyingly Unpredictable’
Cara Lynn ShultzWed, February 18, 2026 at 6:37 PM UTC
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Jason Bateman and wife Amanda Anka in at the Golden Globe Awards in January 2026.
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic/Getty
Jason Bateman says that his wife helped him get sober and called his on-and-off partying “annoyingly unpredictable”
The actor tells The Hollywood Reporter that he decided to “just f---ing do it” to “alleviate a lot of the tension”
Bateman says he hit a point where he realized his partying was “as far as I should go”
Jason Bateman credits his wife, Amanda Anka, with helping him get sober — largely because his on-and-off partying had gotten “annoyingly unpredictable” — the SmartLess podcaster tells The Hollywood Reporter.
“Amanda and I definitely had a few negotiations about the point at which the [partying] spigot was going to completely turn off,” Bateman, 57, tells THR. “She’d be like, ‘This drip, drip, drip is annoyingly unpredictable, Jason.’ ”
Jason Bateman looks back on his career in "The Hollywood Reporter."
Beau Grealy
The actor, who said that, at the time, Anka was the breadwinner, shared that she “didn’t demand that I completely absolve, but that was sort of the back-and-forth, and I was like, well, I feel like my [sobriety] ETA is six months away, but if I could land this plane now, it would alleviate a lot of the tension, so let’s just f---ing do it.”
He’s since gone “California sober,” the go-to term for someone who abstains from all substances except marijuana. Bateman clarified that he's abstained from alcohol and “the Scarface stuff” — aka, cocaine — for decades.
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A successful child star with back-to-back runs on hit series like Little House on the Prairie, Silver Spoons, and The Hogan Family, Bateman shared that once his bid to adult stardom fizzled, he embraced the party scene. “Fortunately, I was living at a time without social media and camera phones, so I got away with a lot, but it was definitely close a few times,” Bateman told the outlet.
Jason Bateman in Los Angeles in 1996
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“I’ve got friends who had bottoms that were pretty chilling, but I was lucky enough to recognize, ‘This is probably as far as I should go if I still want to accomplish the things that I want to get to,’ ” says Bateman, who shares two children, Francesca Nora Bateman, 19, and Maple Sylvie Bateman, 14, with Anka.
“I was conscious the whole time of wanting to get a lot of these boxes checked before I became a father and a guy with a career that I not only wanted but had a feeling I might be able to get it if I just got the right job.”
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
