Love Actually star Marcus Brigstoke has revealed he ‘fell into a hole’ while battling a ‘toxic’ addiction to porn.
The actor and comic, 51, who played radio DJ Mikey in the 2003 film, shared his difficult journey to recovery in a candid interview.
Speaking to host Ben Branson on The Hidden 20% podcast, Marcus shared that while he had overcome previous battles with drug and alcohol addiction when he was 17, he underwent a ‘very, very dramatic’ body change, losing 13 stone in nine months.
But it was following the decline of his first marriage to Sophie Prideaux that his addiction to porn surfaced, with the pair splitting in 2013 when it was revealed he’d had an affair with co-star Hayley Tamaddon.
He said: ‘So I just carried the mass of that around with me, and it had led to a lot of very dysfunctional behavior that I was in denial about.
Love Actually star Marcus Brigstoke has revealed he ‘fell into a hole’ while battling a ‘toxic’ addiction to porn (pictured in the film)
The actor and comedian is best known for his role as radio DJ Mikey in the 2003 film, and in a new interview, has shared his difficult journey to recovery
‘And, so I’d stayed sober from drugs, alcohol, and my compulsive eating disorder, but I had become addicted to porn. And I really had no idea that I was addicted to it. You know, I sort of thought I looked at a normal amount of porn.
‘The normal amount of porn today is not like a normal amount of porn. Well before the internet.
‘So, addicts now who have a porn addiction, most of them were addicted from about the age of 11 to something that no one knows about, that changes your brain chemistry.
‘Like profoundly alters your brain chemistry. And you don’t need to approach anyone to get it. And there are so many people with different depths of addiction to porn. But porn is the most toxic and it’s, it’s changing an awful lot of young men.
‘So that had all happened sort of underneath and had been this, this hole that I’d fallen into and had been a very acceptable addiction for me to have.
‘No one knew about it, I didn’t feel particularly ashamed because it wasn’t hurting anybody. And its what men do anyway.
‘Because listen [I thought], I don’t drink and I don’t take drugs. I’m careful with food. And, I’m on tour a lot, right? I am alone in hotel rooms, I’m not being a creep here.
‘You know, I’m alone. And then, you know, I go on my phone or whatever, and then there’s daylight and I’ve been looking at it all night. For the entire night. And you’re like who’s that then, what sort of life is that?’
Marcus explained that it was following the decline of his first marriage to Sophie Prideaux that his addiction to porn surfaced
Marcus split from Sophie in 2013 when it was revealed he’d had an affair with co-star Hayley Tamaddon (pictured)
‘And the answer is simply not one that I want to have. So I stopped. Yeah I stopped and I’ve had, it’s been such a relief. It’s been such a relief when I went to get help for it, I didn’t go expecting that I would never look at porn again.
‘That was not why I was there. And when that was first suggested, I was like ah no, come on, I’ve got such a list of things I don’t do.
‘And after, four months I was like, oh, I feel so much better. My brain has a clarity to it. It has a peace to it, and I don’t feel ashamed, you know.’
Asked why he decided to speak about his addiction publicly, Mark added: ‘So when I first went into recovery from my addiction, I was really young, but I didn’t know that there was anyone else like me.
‘I didn’t know there was anyone else who had, for example, eaten food out of bins, who had stolen from people that they loved and were close to them and looked them straight in the eye and said, no, no.
‘And given them the look that says, you asking me this is so hurtful and you are such a bad person for asking me about the thing we both know I did.
‘So when I went into recovery […] And you go and you’re crying and you go and ‘I ate from a bin’ and someone went, yeah, me too. And you’re like, what?
‘And then you realise that keeping things secrets will, I mean, for addicts, it’ll just kill you. It literally kill you. I’ve known so many friends who’ve gone back out there and gone back out there means gone back into their addiction.
‘And they died. It killed them. So I learned when I was very, very young to be open where it’s appropriate. I learned a little too late, where not to be open, where it isn’t safe or wise.
Asked why he decided to speak about his addiction publicly, Mark added that there ‘so many men’ who need help
‘And so, I’ve learned that you need secrets from the world is really important, keep your stuff. You know, he says as he talks about being a porn addict. But I mean, whatever.
‘There are so many men who need help with that thing, and the only reason I’m willing for people to go ‘Urghh, what dirty w*****’ is because I really hope that any one person listening to this who goes, I sometimes look at stuff and I don’t feel okay afterwards, then gets help because [you should] feel okay you deserve to.
‘So that thing about not having a lie that stands between you and anyone who’s important to you, it has become essential to me.’
Marcus has also previously shared that when he was sent to boarding school at a young age, his struggles with overeating first began to manifest, but doctors brushed off his concerns.
In a 2011 interview, he said: ‘If I’m honest, I still feel some resentment about that. There’s one doctor in particular, an expert in eating disorders, who would referee fights between my parents and me.
‘They were forever being summoned to school when I’d been caught behaving outrageously. This man threatened to wire my jaw shut. He’d say, ”You see, Marcus, the problem is, you’re so terribly fat.”
‘Did he imagine I didn’t know that? I’d lie in bed in my dormitory and grab at bits of my body, wanting to tear them off.’
In 2013, Marcus divorced his first wife Sophie, after it emerged he’d cheated on her.
Sophie Brigstocke found out her husband of 12 years was cheating a month after he wrote a gushing first-person piece in a national newspaper, enthusiastically describing his family life.
The Hidden 20% is available wherever you get your podcasts.
