**”Bill & Ted” Star Alex Winter Opens Up About Escaping the Pitfalls of Show Business**
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Alex Winter, known for his iconic role in the “Bill & Ted” franchise, has revealed how escaping the harsh realities of show business was crucial for his well-being. Currently starring on Broadway alongside his “Bill & Ted” co-star Keanu Reeves in *Waiting for Gadot*, Winter opened up in an interview with *The Guardian* about the challenges of early success and how surviving years of sexual abuse and trauma compelled him to leave Hollywood and start anew.
For much of his teenage years, Winter, who made his Broadway debut at just 12 years old, worked tirelessly both onstage and behind the scenes. In 1987, he landed a breakthrough role as Marko in the vampire cult classic *The Lost Boys*. Two years later, he gained widespread recognition playing Bill S. Preston in the beloved comedy *Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.*
Winter moved to Los Angeles just shy of graduating from NYU’s film school and began focusing on work behind the camera, directing music videos and commercials, and co-writing various television hits. However, by the age of 26, he felt “fried” and decided he needed an escape.
“I just wanted to get the hell out of the public eye, and just be on the tube, going to my office in Soho and start a family,” Winter shared. He shifted his focus to directing and filming documentaries, expressing satisfaction with this new direction. “My career is where I want it, which is that I have the ability to do whatever interests me the most,” he added. “But I would not have been OK had I not split.”
### Years of Trauma Behind the Scenes
In 2018, Winter courageously disclosed that he was sexually abused by an unnamed adult who has since passed away. At the time of the abuse, Winter was performing alongside Yul Brynner in *The King and I*, while grappling with intense and prolonged trauma.
“There was ‘The King and I’ eight shows a week, happy face feeling genuinely happy in that role. Great relationship with my mom and dad; great relationship with the co-workers around me; doing interviews, signing autographs, living this amazing … and then this nightmarish other existence,” he told *The Guardian* in 2020.
Winter also revealed the long-lasting effects of his experience, including extreme post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “It will wreak havoc on you. It’s a way in which you relate to the world around you and to yourself, and it’s very nuanced, but you can become very fractured,” he explained. “You slowly compartmentalize. You keep this thing over here, you keep that thing over there, and you don’t have any natural equilibrium. That fracturing just gets worse and worse and worse.”
He described how by his mid-20s, he was barely holding himself together. “By your mid-20s, it’s like you’re holding those different selves together with duct tape. That’s when you see kids overdosing or blowing their heads off. In my case, I was just like, I need to stop doing this thing where these eyes are on me all the time and I don’t feel safe or comfortable … I just want to go ride the subway and help raise a family and do my writing and directing.”
Winter has also warned that children placed in high-pressure Hollywood environments will inevitably face psychological repercussions.
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https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/bill-ted-star-alex-winter-says-he-would-not-have-been-okay-he-hadnt-escaped-hollywood-spotlight