Jason Bateman opened up about how the pressures he faced as a child star led to years of partying that almost derailed his Hollywood career.
The 56-year-old began acting at age 10, appearing in commercials — including a memorable ad for Golden Grahams cereal — before rising to stardom as a child actor and later teen idol in hit shows such as “Little House on the Prairie,” “Silver Spoons” and “The Hogan Family.” However, Bateman’s career faltered in the 1990s as he struggled to make the transition into adult roles.
During a recent interview on “CBS Mornings,” Bateman, who is currently starring in the Netflix series “Black Rabbit,” which debuted at No. 1 on the streaming platform, recalled how he embraced a hard-partying lifestyle in his 20s after feeling deprived of a normal youth.
“I was working so hard from [age] 10 and I’d missed a lot of playing with my friends and so when my schedule cleared up a bit in my 20s, I thought, ‘Well, you know, let’s take the opportunity to catch up a little bit,'” he told CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan.
Bateman continued, “I had some money. I had some independence there now, living on my own in this fun house and all my buddies around and… it was incredible. I mean, I just had the best time.”
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However, Bateman admitted that during that period, he didn’t realize the challenges he would later face when he decided to return to acting more seriously.
“I wasn’t really factoring that the industry wasn’t really saving my place in line and when I’m done partying, they’re not just going to say, ‘Hey, welcome back. Here we go.’ So trying to get back in was a little bit more of a humbling struggle for me than I had assumed, and so it was tough,” he said.
“It was really difficult,” Bateman continued. “I thought the rest of my life, career, is gonna be anti-climactic. I’ve gotta find something else to do in another industry, as opposed to banging against the wall and watching everybody else take off and me just kind of stuck in neutral at best.”
In addition to partying, Bateman explained that struggling with auditions was another hurdle in his transition to adult roles.
“You’re always a job away from not having a career, and you’re also that same job away from being the biggest star in the world,” he recalled. “So how am I going to make that transition? What’s that job going to be? And so every audition I went on, I was walking in with those kinds of stakes, understanding that that’s what I’m walking into.”
“And so it was really nerve-racking,” he continued. “I was just riddled with anxiety going to auditions through my 20s.”
“There was a decade of deep anxiety that was probably exacerbated by the amount of partying I was doing, which can feed paranoia and all that kind of crap,” Bateman added.
At his lowest point, Bateman almost left Hollywood behind for a different life in another country.
“I was literally very, very, very close to liquidating what little cash I had, putting it in a duffel bag, going down to the Bradley Terminal at LAX [Los Angeles International Airport], the international terminal, looking up on the ticker board, finding a city that looked interesting and just unplugging and going there and plugging in,” he recalled. “And starting over and learning the language [and] buying a coffee shop with my duffel bag of cash.”
Bateman told Cowan that he changed his mind about leaving the industry after landing a role following a successful audition. He explained that he also began shadowing legendary sitcom director Jimmy Burrows, who co-created “Cheers.” Burrows had directed several episodes in the first season of the hit sitcom “The Hogan Family,” which starred Bateman. “The Hogan Family” ran for six seasons from 1986 to 1991 and cemented Bateman’s status as a teen idol.
Under Burrows’ mentorship, Bateman directed a few episodes of the show, becoming one of the youngest directors in the Directors Guild of America at the time.
Burrows and Bateman reunited for the sitcom “George & Leo,” which aired for one season from 1997 to 1998. During the show’s short-lived run, Burrows directed several episodes while Bateman shadowed him and continued to hone his behind-the-camera skills.
During his interview with “CBS Mornings,” Bateman, who had struggled with being typecast as a sitcom actor, realized that his background in the genre could help him achieve his aspirations to become a director.
“Instead of having all the sitcom experience I had be a detriment, be a sort of a hurdle, a barrier to hiring me, I wanted to turn that into a positive — all that experience — and start directing them and trying to be the next Jimmy Burrows,” he said.
Bateman said that he was grateful for the opportunity to shadow Burrows, who also helped him sign with his television literary agent Bob Broder.
“I was galloping towards that,” he said. “And [I] directed a few episodes of some sitcoms and it was great. I was feeling like an adult. I was using what I had learned.”
Through the end of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Bateman continued acting in short-lived sitcoms and directing episodes of comedy series including “Family Matters,” “Two of a Kind,” “Brothers’ Keeper” and “For Your Love.”
In 2001, Bateman married actress Amanda Anka, the daughter of music icon Paul Anka and model Anne de Zogheb. During a 2009 interview with Details magazine via Us Weekly, Bateman recalled that he decided to commit to sobriety after Amanda gave him an ultimatum about his partying.
According to Us Weekly, Bateman said the turning point came when Amanda left for a vacation in Mexico without him. He recalled that he found himself alone on Christmas morning and decided to attend his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
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While speaking with Details, Bateman remembered thinking to himself at the time, “Do you want to continue being great at being in your twenties, or do you want to step up and graduate into adulthood?”
Shortly afterward, Bateman experienced a career resurgence when he landed the role of Michael Bluth in the critically acclaimed sitcom “Arrested Development,” which earned a devoted cult following. The show reestablished Bateman as a leading man in comedy, and he received a Golden Globe Award for his performance as Bluth in 2005.
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“I got ‘Arrested Development,’ which changed everything and put the paddles on the chest of my career and up came the heartbeat again because it was watched by people in Hollywood and the people that hand out jobs really liked it,” he said. “Middle America was a little slower on the uptake, if at all. But they weren’t handing out jobs, you know, in Kansas. They were handing them out in Hollywood and Hollywood was watching and that was really vital for me because I was kind of, not damaged goods, maybe, I don’t know, but I wasn’t fresh.
“I was a guy that had done a bunch of sitcoms and sitcoms were on the way out, single-camera comedies were on their way in with shows like ‘The Wonder Years’ and things like that, and so I was kind of the old guard and I was reading for these pilots that were trying to be newer and hipper. ‘Arrested Development’ being sort of the zenith of that.”
The actor went on to star in hit comedy movies including “Horrible Bosses,” “Identity Thief,” “Game Night,” “Extract,” “Zootopia” and “Office Christmas Party.” He also took on dramatic roles in films including “Juno,” “This Is Where I Leave You,” “The Gift,” “Air” and “Carry-On.”
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Bateman also established himself as an acclaimed director. He directed episodes of “Arrested Development” and its Netflix revival series and helmed the feature films “Bad Words” and “The Family Fang.”
In 2017, Bateman took on his career-defining dramatic role as Marty Byrde in the Netflix drama series “Ozark,” which ran for four seasons until 2022. Bateman received three Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe nominations for his performance. He also received two Emmy nominations for outstanding directing for a drama series, winning once in 2019 for the episode “Reparations.”
Looking back, Bateman reflected on the pressure he felt while helping support his family financially during his years of child stardom. Bateman and his sister, actress Justine Bateman, who also found fame early in life, became their family’s breadwinners during the 1980s.
“In retrospect, obviously, being a 56-year-old man with two kids and a wife, it is a complicated thing,” he said during his interview on “CBS Mornings.”
Bateman explained that as a child, he took pride in being able to support his family financially. “Like this is helping us live in the place we’re living in and paying for the school that you want to go to and look at this new family car we bought and it was like, you feel like an adult and a partner in the family and it gave me a lot of confidence that I could take on the adult responsibility that I was living in at work, so I just felt great.”
“Yes, I was 10, 11, 12, you know, whatever, but I was feeling, you know, twice that age, which was helpful, so I didn’t have a panic attack with all the adult responsibility,” he continued. “There were moments of deep stress when it came a big grading period at school. If you don’t maintain a C average, you lose your work permit, which comes up every six months. And so if I didn’t have my work permit I would lose my job on the show. And if I lost my job on the show, maybe we didn’t make the mortgage payment and all the people on the show might be out of work so studying for exams was probably even more stressful than kids regularly go through.
“In retrospect, I wouldn’t change anything about my childhood at all, but… I wouldn’t be comfortable putting my kids through that because I think I got away with it,” Bateman added.
