JASON UNPREDICTABLE –
February 18, 2026 – 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.’”
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.
