Jason Bateman decided to quit drinking after his drinking caused “tension” with his wife Amanda Anka.
Anka, 57, told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Wednesday that the “drip, drip, drip” at a party with her partner decades ago was “annoyingly unpredictable.”
She asked the “Ozark” star, also 57, “When will the spigot completely shut off?”
Bateman recalled that there were “a few negotiations” about the drinking, adding: “(She) didn’t ask me to give her a full exemption, but it was kind of a back and forth.
“I was like, ‘Well, I feel like I’m six months away from my[sobriety]ETA, but if I could land this plane now, it would be a lot less stressful, so let’s just do it,'” the podcast co-host continued.
Bateman has since revealed that he does smoke marijuana, though he refers to alcohol and cocaine as “the Scarface thing.”
“I have friends who wear pretty cold bottoms, but I’m lucky enough to realize, ‘If I still want to achieve what I want to achieve, this is probably the limit,'” he told the magazine.
“I always knew that I wanted to check a lot of these boxes before I became a father and before I became a man with the career that I wanted. It was something I not only wanted, but felt like if I got the right job, I might be able to have it,” the Emmy winner added.
Bateman married Anka in July 2001 and got sober the same year.
The couple later welcomed daughters Francesca, now 19, in 2006 and daughter Maple, now 14, in 2012.
The sobriety, the wedding in Malibu, Calif., and the role in “Arrested Development” all happened within “12 to 24 months,” Bateman revealed to Esquire in December 2025, adding that he also quit smoking.
The previous decade had been a “confusing and difficult…learning curve” for the former child star, he explained to the magazine.
Mr Bateman reiterated that there were “some things” that he couldn’t do to be successful, and said 30 seemed like the right time to “execute a plan” for success.
In 2009, he detailed (via NBC Miami) that after “working hard” as a child, he “played hard…played really well” in his 20s, but “was never in the right place for rehab.”
Bateman said, “It was important for me to cut out alcohol because it makes you want to stay out all night and have blowjobs and smoke joints and stuff like that. … So it’s time. Do you want to stay great in your 20s or do you want to step up and graduate to adulthood?”
