A different kind of crazy

Hit series ‘Mr Robot’ has rejuvenated Christian Slater’s career. But can he handle fame sober, asks Jane Mulkerrins

‘When you’re 17, and you’re in the middle of something that’s swirling around you, you don’t know what to grab onto to give you a sense of stability,” says Christian Slater. “When you’re almost 47, you’ve learnt some things, you’ve found out where your boundaries are, and what makes you feel safe.”

At 17, stardom was “swirling around” Slater. He was filming The Name of the Rose (based on the novel by Umberto Eco) with Sean Connery, and followed this with a role opposite Winona Ryder in the dark comic teen drama Heathers. His performance drew comparisons with Jack Nicholson, but the parallels extended off-screen too as Slater took on the mantle of young Hollywood hellraiser.

He was arrested for drink driving in 1989, and, again, for trying to board a plane with a gun in his luggage at JFK airport five years later. Then, in 1997, he assaulted his girlfriend, Michelle Jonas, and a police officer, while under the influence of drugs and alcohol and ended up spending three months in jail, followed by some time in rehab.

Such high-profile incidents impacted heavily on Slater’s career, and he has spent much of the past 15 years making lowbudget and straight-to-video films. Playback, released in 2012, grossed just $264 in America. Others might have abandoned the profession, but not Slater. “There was always something in the back of my mind saying: ‘ There’s something out there.’ ” He knew he had to “keep going, keep trying and keep giving it a shot”.

Slater’s persistence has finally paid off. At this January’s Golden Globes in Los Angeles, he picked up the Best Supporting Actor award for his role as the title character in Mr Robot, one of the most complex and critically acclaimed shows on television. Physically, he is also once more in good shape. When we meet, in Manhattan, his cheekbones look as sharp as they did two decades ago.

“Mr Robot felt very special from the get-go,” says Slater. “But [in television] there is never any guarantee that something is going to be the card in the deck that wins the game.”

The drama centres on Elliot Anderson (Rami Malek), a talented young computer engineer and hacker who is recruited by the anarchist Mr Robot to join his band of “hacktivists” aiming to cancel global debt by bringing down the world’s largest conglomerate, nicknamed Evil Corp. Elliot also has severe mental health problems and, consequently, it is not always clear what, or even who, is real, creating what Slater merrily calls an “infinite loop of insanity”. He is forbidden from revealing the plot of the forthcoming second season but says it will be more overtly political.

Slater is sober these days and proves to be charming company. Yet he possesses a manic energy that hints at something darker. “I used to be crazy in one way, now I’m crazy in another,” he said recently. And working on a series about internet hacking has made