Leslie Jordan had his first drink when he was 14. It took him 33 years to get sober.

Actor Leslie Jordan has sadly passed away at 67, after becoming involved in a car crash on Monday in Los Angeles.

Now, the star is being remembered for his larger-than-life personality, his dedication to comedy, and the incredible life he lived as a performer.

But while Jordan was making us laugh on our screens, he underwent a very personal battle in the late 1990s, when he identified his drinking habits were a problem.

He was sober for the last 20 years of his life, but for the 30 years prior, it seemed Jordan used alcohol as a crutch.

Jordan's early relationship with alcohol.

Jordan has been very open about growing up in a Baptist Christian family, who didn’t drink alcohol.

“I remember my family were teetotal, but I knew some Episcopalians, and they’re big drinkers,” he joked in an interview with The Guardian in 2021.

“So, I went to their house, got into their bar and within 10 minutes I just thought: ‘What’s been wrong with me? I’m the life of the party now’,” he explained. 

He was only 14.

“I was adorable, I was precious,” he told PEOPLE. “And I stayed precious and adorable for the next 33 years.”

Although his enjoyment of alcohol conflicted with his dedication to his faith, the latter waned in the following years.

“I so wanted to be a good Christian, I really did. I wanted to follow the teachings of Christ to the best of my ability, and I tried, but then the whole gay thing starts happening,” he shared.

“At the age of 17, I turned my back on religion.”

Leslie Jordan starring in the sitcom Call Me Kat. Image: Getty.

Alcohol abuse in Hollywood.

While he had issues with alcohol abuse, Jordan mostly saw his behaviour as social.

“I’m just having a good time, a really good time, and then you start noticing that your friends are getting younger and younger and younger because everybody that you drank with as hard as you drank has finally said ‘[I’ve] got to stop this. I’ve got a family’,” Jordan shared.

He said that alcohol also helped him with insecurity around his sexuality.

“I felt it was a lot easier to be gay when I was loaded. My problem was I was a bar drinker. I started getting DUI’s,” he explained.

“And that one year [1997], I got three in a row. They sentenced me to 120 days,” he told PEOPLE.

"I was there for 14 days, and that was it. The judge told me, he said, 'If you so much as misbehave at all, I'll put you back in jail, Mister Jordan.'"

Leslie Jordan in 2018. Image: Getty.

Getting sober

After a few run-ins with the law - including one where he shared a cell overnight with a young Robert Downey Jr, Jordan got sober.

“The hardest thing that I ever did was getting sober, but I was so scared to go back to jail. I was so scared,” he said.

“That’s what I tell people: if you want to get sober, try 27 days in the LA men’s county jail. That will sober your ass up.”

Leslie Jordan’s legacy.

Jordan starred in several quite random roles throughout his career, which didn’t follow any particular trajectory, and seemed more to do with fun.

He was best known for his role as Beverly Leslie on the sitcom Will & Grace, and a few different roles in the anthology series American Horror Story. However, he also did Celebrity Big Brother UK, The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time, and The United States vs. Billie Holiday, to name just a few.

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In the last few years of his life, he became a social media sensation, making Instagram videos throughout the various COVID-19 lockdowns, hoping to keep people entertained.

“I set myself rules; I didn’t want to talk about religion, or politics, and I didn’t want to sell anything,” he said of the videos.

“I just wanted it to be somewhere people could get a real quick laugh if they needed it.”

When he was asked last year if he felt he broke barriers for gay actors, he said: “When you’re in the midst of it, you don’t see it that way - but in retrospect, I think: I was so brave to be so gay so early on." 

He admitted to The Guardian that he was sometimes told in the industry to “take it down a notch, butch it up a little,” but that he always stayed true to himself.

“I think that’s the way the barriers were broken,” he admitted.

Feature Image: Getty/Mamamia.