Tom Ford: If I’d carried on drinking I would have died
DESIGNER and film director Tom Ford has claimed he would not be alive today if he had not stopped drinking after his life spiralled out of control.
The American, 53, who is now teetotal and has a two-year-old son, said London was part of the problem — as a city where it is considered “absolutely normal” to have 10 drinks a day.
He told ES Magazine he had been a “very highly functioning alcoholic” but “it really started to show” in his forties, after he split with fashion house Gucci. “It started to get out of control. My life really started to unravel … I became quite depressed,” he said.
“When you’re depressed you drink more and when you drink more you get more depressed. And along with the drinks there were drugs. And when you have that kind of high you also have that kind of low. And I didn’t have a child and I didn’t have — for a couple of years — a career.
“I honestly don’t think I’d be alive if I hadn’t stopped drinking.”
He added: “I have to say, probably one of the reasons that my drinking did get out of control was living here [London]. You can very easily consume 10 drinks a day and be considered absolutely normal… Sometimes I’d say to friends, ‘I think I have a drinking problem,’ and they’d say, ‘Oh you don’t have a drinking problem! Have another drink!’
“Once I stopped drinking I found this clarity, which can be painful for a while, but my life has just fallen into place. I built a business, made a movie, had a child, I’m making another movie.”
Following the success of his debut film A Single Man, his current project, Nocturnal Animals, prompted a bidding war after its presentation in Cannes. Ford is writing, directing, producing and financing the thriller, which stars Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal. Focus Features is rumoured to have paid £13 million for worldwide distribution rights, in what is believed to be the film festival’s biggest deal. Ford will shoot it over six weeks. He plans to set up an editing suite in his London design studio.
Ford has a son, Jack, with his husband Richard Buckley. The child was conceived via IVF and a surrogate. Criticising Italian designer Domenico Dolce of Dolce & Gabbana, who earlier this year described children born to gay couples through IVF as “synthetic”, he said: “I found [the comments] incredibly ignorant and insensitive. I was quite shocked.”
Speaking about fatherhood, he added: “It’s stress worrying and thinking about your child, which takes your mind off your work or what such-and-such said that pissed you off. It’s a break from yourself.
“For some gay men, their houses become their children. It was that case for me, but I just don’t care as much any more. I have moments where I think, ‘Oh shit!’ It’s not exactly a pigsty, but it’s not as immaculate.”
Ford said he was happy to lead a quieter life, preferring dinner with a few friends or one-on-one meetings: “I can mix cocktails for people, I like being at parties where people are drinking a little bit — until they start slurring and it gets really boring and I want to go home, get into bed and read a book.
“Most people think I lead a very different life. They see me in a retouched photo selling perfume, or in a magazine, and probably think I am drinking and girls are lying around my house naked and we’re doing a lot of drugs.
“But really I’m at home having dinner with Richard and Jack and we’re probably going to watch TV and I’m going to be in bed by 10pm or 10.30pm.”