Johnson’s no stranger to the world of vice

Press, 23 April 1986, Page 16

Johnson’s no stranger to the world of vice

By

ANN STEELE DUO Features

Prostitution, gambling, money-laundering, pornography, arms deals, terrorism, extortion, bribery and corruption. You name it, the tough cops from “Miami Vice” are somewhere in the thick of it.

And Don Johnson, the 35-year-old from Missouri who plays the hard-drink-ing workaholic, Sonny Crockett, is no stranger to the underworld in real life. Now a reformed character, he was once a drug addict who regularly “blew his brains” on cocaine.

It was the actress, Patti D’Arbanville (immortalised in her former lover Cat Stevens’s hit song "My Lady D’Arbanville”) who straightened him out. Johnson met her three years ago. She had two failed marriages and he boasted a hat-trick of marital disasters.

He is not too proud that he remembers nothing about his second marriage. He was drunk and woke up the next morning with a massive hangover — and a wife. The marriage was annulled.

Patti D’Arbanville managed to solve her own drink and drug problems with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous and Johnson gives her all the credit for dragging him

from a life of tempestuous love affairs, bizarre relationships, alcoholic hazes and non-stop partying. Now he is a healthier, wiser man.

"I had pretty much killed my career by letting my body get out of shape with drugs and alcohol,” he admits. “I never drank or took drugs while working, but when they said the day was over I would try to set the land speed record.”

If he felt like Mexican food he would hop on a plane to Mexico. Parties would go on for days. Finally, Johnson came down to earth with a thud when M.G.M. cancelled his contract. It was a chance meeting in a restaurant with Patti D’Arbanville that has turned him into the United States’ latest heartthrob. Without her help, he insists he would never have made it. It was not until after their son, Jesse, was born, that Johnson finally decided to slow down. “I knew that if I didn’t do something Patti would take Jesse away.

“I walked into the breakfast room one morning. The sun was shining and the birds were singing. I sat down and looked at them and Patti looked at me, and I knew if I didn’t kick the drugs and the booze, she was going

to leave. “I said, ‘Patti, I’m a drunk and a drug addict and I am going to do something about it’.” Patti D’Arbanville recalls: “I was watching this beautiful and talented man freak out and I thought that maybe the only way to help was to leave him.” She didn’t. Instead she took him along to an A.A. meeting. . Just 45 days later (so the story goes) he was cured. Says Johnson, looking back to those darker days: “You ask for a higher power to help you. I got down on my knees and humbled myself and said, ‘God, I can’t do this alone.’

‘‘Now I have turned my life around. At last I have got a role that fits me—- — done the research.” His real-life experiences have proved invaluable for Sonny Crockett. In the drug-dealing scenes on set he became an unofficial adviser, calling a halt if he felt that details were unauthentic. In “Miami Vice,” Sonny’s wife and six-year-old son have left him because of the appalling pressures of work, his boozing and his partying. Elvis, his alligator, is his only constant companion. (A bit of a strange creature whose equilibrium is not all that it should be — on account of swallowing an alarm

clock and a packet of LSD in the same gulp!) About Sonny Crockett (seedily charming in his beachbum tan, $3OOO suits, $4OO espadrilles (but no socks) and $l2 Tshirts, Johnson says: "We have the same sensibilities. He’s a hard-partying guy and although I’m a lot more conservative now, I can draw from that experience.

“I think like Crockett. We share a very hard and tough exterior and a sarcastic wit that I think covers up a very idealistic and tender gentle interior.

“Both Crockett and I love work. He lives as an undercover cop. He loves that element of dealing with people, and I think that these people fascinate him. I want him eventually to be running a social commentary with a sense of humour about everything he sees on the streets.”

"Miami Vice’s” huge I success has bought acco-» lades to Johnson. He has; been cast in N.B.C.’s "The i Long Hot Summer,” a TV* movie version of the 1958» film. »

Johnson will play the * wandering handyman, a role created by Paul Newman. i

“You work hard forw years to achieve a certain ” amount of notoriety,” says « Johnson. “I don’t think j* any of us were prepared» for the kind of success® this was going to bring. | “I have a theory. people get used to failure because so much of the 2 time you strive to accom- * plish something and it* falls short of the mark. * “So you learn to deal * with failure a lot than success. “But after 15 years of* suffering and rejection,« I’m enjoying success. It* makes life so much sweeter.” — DUO copyright j