Samuel Johnson couldn't escape his love of alcohol. So he became the local postie in tiny Tallarook.

TW: This post contains details of a car crash, which may be triggering to some readers.

Despite almost losing his life in 2021 in a car crash, Samuel Johnston still refers to this moment as "the good accident".

The 47-year-old Gold Logie actor was on his way to visit family on a Saturday night in June when he was involved in an accident that saw him suffer injuries to his head.

In a new interview with Australian Story, he reflected on how the accident gave him a new lease on life and a renewed appreciation for his relationship with his partner, Emma Rooke.

"I couldn't believe how much Em cared for me," he told Australian Story.

"I just woke up and went, 'Wow, I'm not awful. I thought I was a turd burger, and I'm not. I'm not.'"

To this, Em added, "He realised he was deserving of love. He put the whip away and stopped being so hard on himself."

The accident was a wake-up call. "Even though I nearly died, a little knock on the head balanced everything out nicely," he said, noting that the accident affected his sense of smell and balance.

These days, he lives in the little town of Tallarook, north of Melbourne, where he volunteers as the local postie. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Johnson gets up at the crack of dawn to do his 30-kilometre mail run on his pushbike.

Johnson's side hustle was inspired by his desire to confront some substance-abuse issues. "The problem is that I really love alcohol. It's fun. But I like it a little too much," Johnson said.

"Having a postie round… there's three nights of the week that I'm not misbehaving."

He now sees himself as a 'work in progress'.

"Things definitely aren't as bad as they were, but I'm not going to peddle some bulls**t redemptive narrative here," he reflected.

"I don't have sad days. I don't really have bad days. I'm not trying to paint a picture that's not true. It's just my life now. It's like a rainbow life."

Back in 2021, Johnson spoke about the moment he woke up in hospital with no memory of being hit by a car weeks before, telling The Project that he "wasn't expected to survive".

"I pulled into a slip road and went and had a wee and woke up a couple of weeks later," he told Pete Helliar.

"I wasn't expected to survive. I nearly died. My face was really a mess, basically; my whole right side was cactus. I inhaled glass."

Image: Channel 10.

Johnson, who spent weeks in hospital, went on to explain just how serious his injuries were.

"I got hit between 40 and 50km/h by a small white vehicle. I broke my skull, I fractured my upper neck, and luckily my face bore the brunt of the impact, so my face saved my brain from a lot of the damage."

"Basically, I got hit fairly badly and by the time they got me to hospital, they rushed me into ICU, I tanked, and I had two loved ones with me, I was told later, that were put into the death room - the one with the fridge and the couch where you are private and you are able to be told the bad news."

The actor credits his girlfriend, Em, for saving his life and making sure help got to him.

Image: Channel 10.

When he woke up in hospital, he had no memory of what happened, having suffered from traumatic amnesia. He also shared a photo of himself from the night which he also doesn't remember being taken.

"It was weird waking up. I woke up, and I was really way more famous than I ever remembered being," he shared.

"[I thought] photographers were trying to get at me while I was inside and I wasn't in a hospital — I was either in a mental home or my drink had been spiked.

"Maybe I was kidnapped, maybe I was clinically insane. So, I thought all kinds of things. I was Russian for a while, I spoke with a heavy Russian accent in three-word sentences for a couple of days, and then I was a Japanese 11-year-old girl... Basically happens when your brain gets wobbled is you go loopy."

Johnson said he doesn't remember this photo being taken. Image: Channel 10.

Johnson said he was still in the process of recovering.

"Whilst I appear to be okay, a lot of the symptoms are now invisible. But I'm still injured and I'm still recovering."

The actor's sister, Hilde Hinton, first shared the news of his accident on the Love Your Sister Facebook account back in June.

"I wish I didn’t have to tell you this," she began the post.

"Early Saturday night, Sam was on his way to visit family when he was accidentally hit by a car. Our Ambos got him picked up and tucked away safely in hospital in record time. I followed them in."

"He's awake and not too happy that he doesn't have his pants. Nobody loves a hospital gown," she joked, adding that he had a "sore head".

Johnson, who's best known for his roles in TV series The Secret Life Of Us and Molly, has raised $10 million for cancer research through his charity Love Your Sister.

The actor started the charity in 2012 with his late sister Connie, who had bone cancer from age 11, uterine cancer from age 22 and breast cancer at age 33.

She passed away from breast cancer in 2017, aged 40.

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A post shared by Samuel Johnson (@samueljjohnson78)

The following year, he was named Victoria's Australian of the Year for his fundraising work for the charity.

Speaking to Mamamia's No Filter podcast in 2018, Johnson said he credits his "manic" brain with some of the biggest achievements for the cause.

"I use that blue-sky area, I use those manic bursts, I use those delusions to create my life and my life is born from them," he shared.

"So yeah, if you can harness your madness, great things will come. But you can only harness it by facing off with it. If you do not acknowledge your madness and work to understand it – in the knowledge that it will know you better than you will ever know it – then you’re just a raving lunatic, as opposed to a crazy guy done good."

Samuel Johnson speaks to Mia Freedman on the No Filter podcast. Post continues below.

In 2019, Johnson earned a further $50,000 for his charity when he won Dancing with the Stars.

In 2021, he returned to acting in the Stan series Eden, where he plays police detective Ezra Katz.

This article was originally published on June 22, 2021, and has since been updated with new information.

Feature Image: Getty/ABC.