Jason Isaacs has recalled his ‘terrifying’ stalking ordeal and the wild advice he received from police officers when seeking help.
The actor, best known for roles including Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter franchise, was stalked by a young woman for almost a decade in the late 1990s.
Isaacs, 61, grew increasingly frustrated with cops during this time, as they wrongly assumed his stalker was an ex-lover.
In fact, she and Isaacs had never met.
This led to him feeling that he was going ‘mad’, all while fearing for his safety, not knowing what the woman’s intentions were.
‘I was terrified my house would be burned down or I’d be stabbed,’ he told i.
‘And because it was a young woman, the police didn’t take it seriously for a long time.’
Admitting he felt ‘disturbed’ knowing she could read his latest comments, Isaacs went on to recall her being arrested outside his home.
However, she was released by mistake and reappeared at his door.
The White Lotus star compared his experience to that of Richard Gadd, who created the award-winning Netflix series Baby Reindeer based on his traumatic stalking and sexual assault.
When Gadd tried reporting his stalking to the police, though, he wasn’t taken seriously. In his comedy-drama thriller, the comedian’s character, Donny, is laughed at when he comes forward as a victim.
Revealing what police told him when he reached out, Isaacs said he had several ‘insane’ suggestions, such as changing his name and job.
‘A different officer advised to “just knock her out.” ‘They were next to useless, the police,’ he said.
‘They kept insisting I must have had an affair with her. And I’d never met her.’
Isaacs stated that he ‘should have written a film’ about what happened, with Baby Reindeer ‘not much’ more dramatic than his own troubles.
Getting frank about that period of his life, he confessed his ideal state would’ve been ‘in a coma’.
At the time, Issacs was trying to recover from alcohol and drug addiction, all while dealing with the threat of his stalker.
The movie star was clean by age 35, but it wasn’t until August 2020 that he spoke publicly about his demons.
‘I managed to put on a very good show in the world until I shut the front door and [my wife] saw what was left of me,’ he recalled, describing his life as ‘small’ and one of ‘paranoia’.
Upon achieving sobriety, he traced his addiction back to the age of 12, when a bartender gave him and his friends a bottle of Southern Comfort.
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After drinking it, he woke up ‘with a splitting headache, stinking of puke’ and with a ‘huge scab’, also feeling ‘shame’.
After this, he ‘chased the sheer ecstatic joy [he] felt that night for another 20 years with increasingly dire consequences’.
Now, Isaacs has replaced ‘love affair’ with drugs with physical activity, such as tennis.
He has also warned fans against congratulating him on his sobriety milestones, having previously said ‘pride is the worst part’.
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