'Boston Strangler' star David Dastmalchian reflects on 20 years of sobriety

David Dastmalchian has broken his silence on his journey of sobriety after being an addict for five years.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania actor - who struggled with "heroin addiction" for five years before becoming an actor - said that his sobriety informs his work, adding that he is nothing but grateful to be twenty years sober.

“For nothing else, the endless pool of gratitude that I feel for the past two decades of this journey, living without drugs and alcohol, absolutely informs all the work that I do as an actor and think about the characters I want to bring to life,” the 47-year-old told Page Six at the premiere of his latest film, Boston Strangler.

Dastmalchian, first began taking drugs in high school, but his addiction increased while he was studying theater at DePaul University in Chicago. As he graduated, he became homeless and lived in his car for two years. 

The Teacher actor later kicked-off his journey towards sobriety when his family enrolled him into a psychiatric facility, after that he got into a rehab and then a sober house.

In Boston Strangler, he plays a serial killer Albert DeSalvo, who purportedly confessed to the murder of 13 women from 1962 to 1964 in Boston.

Dastmalchian revealed that he studied DeSalvo’s life deeply in order to prepare to take on this role.

He continued: "There’s an incredible series of books and research that exists, so I just dove in as soon as I found out I was going to be bringing this character to life — and please believe me, this was no small undertaking on my part." 

"I don’t take it lightly for a second the importance of bringing to life someone who inflicted pain on so many people — and who was a real person who had a great deal of pain inflicted on himself" Dastmalchian concluded.