Behind the welcoming and famous personality known as John Goodman, the actor has had his own fair share of challenges — and he recently opened up about them on an episode of the SmartLess podcast on June 3, 2024.
Speaking with hosts Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes, the Roseanne actor talked about how he doesn’t possess the same level of motivation for acting now in his life as he once did when he was younger, fresh in his career.
“It’s much different now. I feel like I’m still learning,” he shared. “The last couple of years have been goofy for me because I’ve been trying to be good — and it doesn’t work that way.”
As he continued, he added, “You know, like planning things way too much.” According to the 71-year-old, “the fear of losing trust in myself” has been his biggest challenge in both his life and his career.
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“I overcompensated by working way too hard. I’ve just kind of come out of that in the last year or so,” he said. “And there’s so much to learn.” After being asked how he got past that, John replied that it was by “practically having a nervous breakdown.”
“It was bad with everything,” he said. “It just purged out of me when I went to the therapist one day. And then for the rest of the day it was horrible. Nothing worked.”
Through time and consistency, John managed to get to a place of peace again.
“You’ve got to be relaxed when you do stuff. And open and listen,” he explained.
He was then asked if he was intending to take on different acting roles as he gets older and continues to change as a person. “I don’t know. I’ve been doing the same same two roles for the last four or five years, and I haven’t really had much of a chance to do everything else.”
Later on in the conversation, he shared that he is open about his struggles in hopes of being able to help others, especially when it comes to his sobriety. “I’ve been clean about 16 years now,” he said. “The last 16 years I’ve had to grow a lot into my normal age, and it’s been a lot, but I’m glad I did it.”
In a previous interview, he opened up about his addiction. “I had a problem with it,” he said. “I drank for a while and towards the end of that, the lines would not come. And it was like a snowball. It just built up a lack of confidence that I could even learn lines. And I was punishing myself more than anything else and even using my energy wrong and it’s just a matter of being relaxed with it, and knowing [the lines] are going to come, have patience.”
