$400,000 in DEBT –
May 7, 2023 – “I lost everything in the fire. I had no car, I had no clothes, I had no money — I was $400,000 in debt,” Bentley recalled.
After moving to Hollywood, The Hunger Games star started taking mushrooms and ketamine, and while he recognized that can now be a mental health tool for some, it wasn’t for him. The psychedelics just led to more drugs.
“I ended up going down the cocaine and heroin route,” he explained. “Hard drugs. Hard partying. You’re in clubs and you’re at after-parties, and there’s cocaine, and eventually it became heroin.”
Bentley said he wasn’t “trying to kill myself or anything,” but had competitive energy when it came to doing drugs.
“That period was incredibly dark. I did really dangerous stuff. I went downtown. I went and hung with really shady people,” he shared. “That was just me: Go far. Be the guy who went the furthest.”
Before addiction temporarily sidelined his career, Bentley did the 2002 film The Four Feathers with Ledger. The two were close up until the Oscar winner’s shocking death in 2008. Ledger accidentally died from a prescription overdose.
