Christian Slater? Who has heard anything from Christian Slater in the last million years???
Though the star has been acting, most of his films have been straight-to-video–which is never a good thing for an actor’s career.
However, the former A-list celeb is making news with the revelation about his famous father’s struggle with mental health.
Christian and Nymphomaniac director, Lars von Trier chatted it up in Interview magazine. During the interview, Slater revealed that his famous father, Michael Hawkins, suffers from manic-depressive schizophrenia.
“He’s always had trouble — he was a fantastic actor and extraordinarily charismatic and very, very good looking, but he had a really difficult time working with directors, collaborating with people,” Slater said.
He continued explaining that his father, 79, is a “manic-depressive schizophrenic.”
Christian and his father have a history of a strained relationship. Slater went nine long years without talking to his father. He said he was embedded “in the middle of the relationship between his mother and father and needed to get out of that.”
Though father and son haven’t seen each other in years, they have reconnected, revealing that Hawkins is “in a place now, getting a lot of help from someone.”
"In the last few months my father actually reached out to me and wanted to reconcile and reconnect,” Slater stated.
He added, “I was very grateful to be able to communicate with him. From a tumultuous, back-and-forth relationship, we were able to begin to build a better bridge for the both of us. So that was good.”
Luckily the estranged relationship between father and son is isolated to Hawkins and Slater. Slater, a father himself, has a healthy relationship with his 16-year-old son, Jaden, whom he fathered with ex-wife Ryan Haddon.
Jaden is moving in with Slater and his wife Brittany Lopez.
The actor also has a 13-year-old daughter, Eliana, that he had with Haddon.
“When I look around…I’m certainly happily married [and] I have a great relationship with my [own] kids," he gushed, adding that he’s "excited to get the opportunity to be a bit more of a father in his [son’s] life.”