'Hung' Star Thomas Jane on Sex, Drugs and Sobriety

Squelching gay-for-pay rumors, Hung's Thomas Jane opens up about the DUI that was actually a failed suicide attempt, and how waking up in jail to a cop asking for his autograph got him to clean up his life.

When Thomas Jane offers you a drink, he’s not screwing around.

There’s no alcohol in the fridge of the 42-year-old actor’s cozy home, which is tucked away in the Hollywood Hills, but the dizzying array of bizarre beverages he recently picked up at a Japanese market—including but not limited to a cold can of coffee and a bubblegum-flavored fizzy drink decorated with an array of Hello Kitty pictures—are more interesting than any alcoholic cocktail you can imagine.

Stronger drinks—and drugs—went out the window for Jane back in March of 2008, when he was thrown in jail for a DUI while driving home from a friend’s funeral. But that doesn’t mean the avid practitioner of meditation has no vices: he wonders whether we should talk on his deck so he can light up a cigar, but it's raining. So we take a seat at his dining room table, and as we talk, he's so distracted by the unlit cigar that I eventually all but insist he smoke it.

It’s hard to reconcile this intense, serious-minded actor with the affable male prostitute he plays on the HBO hit, Hung. A far more fitting character for Jane is the one he inhabits in the recently-released Mark Pellington indie I Melt With You—a nihilistic drama about college friends (played by Rob Lowe and Jeremy Piven) who reunite every year for a "lost weekend" of drugs and alcohol. Shooting the overindulgent party scenes “really wasn’t very fun,” Jane admits. “Once you’ve transcended something, the overall feeling that I’m left with is, ‘Man, I’m real happy that that’s over—that was painful’ and some gratitude in the form of, ‘Wow, I don’t have to live like that or take that home with me.’ So in that way it was great.” Jane talks about the movie, which he sees as “a parable for modern living,” and even reveals, for the first time, that his DUI actually saved his life.

You not only acted in I Melt With You but you’re also a producer on it. What attracted you to it?

The DUI sort of marked the end for me. I had a couple of whiskeys in me and was pulled over four times that one night and let go every time except for the last one.

I loved the writing. I loved the fact that these guys basically live their lives in between vacations, waiting for a chance to ameliorate themselves with drugs and alcohol and forget about their lives for a minute. I think the reason why we have such amazing addiction issues in America is because we are consciously and unconsciously encouraged to live out addictive behavior and be addicted to things that are outside of ourselves to fix ourselves: that’s the way capitalism works. If you exacerbate that, you get something like I Melt With You, where people are trying to destroy their lives in a short period of time so they don’t have to think or feel.

Can you clarify how, exactly, you think capitalism is related to addiction?

We’re taught to fulfill our emotional and physical and spiritual needs by consuming something—whether it’s a product or a service or an idea. You’re taught that a better car is going to make you feel better—or a bigger house, more money in the bank, a prettier wife, a richer husband or processed foods that are easier to eat and full of all kinds of crazy shit. Addiction issues would drastically be reduced in this country if we were taught what our God-given birthright as conscious humans is from an early age instead of having our brains actively switched off in school. That’s what school is: a prison for your mind. It’s a travesty that we do this to our children.

You have a child [eight-year-old Harlow, with ex-wife Patricia Arquette]. Is she not in school?

My kid’s not in the American school system—no fucking way. I dropped out of high school and my kid goes to a school where I believe they have a hell of a lot more going on than we do in America. There are alternative schools, and I highly suggest that everyone look into them.

What do you do personally to combat the other problems that plague society?

Well, I’m an artist, so I get to live a little bit outside the margins. I don’t watch television, even though I’m on cable right now. I don’t read the newspaper. All the major news, the things that are going on in the world, I get from word of mouth: I get it from friends—sort of an oral tradition in the village, so to speak. I pick up headline stuff on things like Google News but [avoid] any kind of in-depth brainwashing that’s done by CNN or any news show. And I stopped drinking and doing drugs—I shut myself off in that way.

When did you stop drinking and doing drugs?

A couple of years ago. I’ve stopped on and off throughout my life. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with alcohol and drugs: I love the freedom that they seem to afford you by breaking you out of your conventional thinking but they always lead you to the confining trap of being sort of—in one form or another or to one degree or another—addicted to the freedom that you feel drugs and alcohol are affording you. The truth is, it’s not true freedom, so you’re not truly enjoying God’s gift of consciousness when you’re fucked up on alcohol or drugs.

Did you quit drugs and alcohol after you got your DUI?

The DUI sort of marked the end for me. A buddy of mine had just died and I was actually driving home from his funeral. I had a couple of whiskeys in me and was pulled over four times that one night and let go every time except for the last one. Each time I got pulled over, I was driving faster than I was the previous time. The first time I got stopped, I was sleeping in my car. Not driving, just sleeping: passed out behind the wheel. Then I got pulled over for doing 100 miles per hour, then 120. The last time, I was doing 142.