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**”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

Bill Maher has some strong feelings about President Donald Trump’s latest project—and no, it’s not another social media platform.

On Friday’s episode of *Real Time with Bill Maher*, the HBO host took aim at Trump’s controversial $300 million renovation of the White House, calling it a troubling sign of permanence.

“The symbolism is he’s not leaving,” Maher told his panel. “Who puts in a giant ballroom if you’re leaving?”

Earlier that day, demolition began on the East Wing—the portion of the White House long used for guest arrivals and official events. Trump has said the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom will be funded privately by himself, several major tech companies, and “many generous patriots.”

While Maher admitted the move “bothers” him, the conversation heated up when former RNC chairman Michael Steele pushed back on the comedian’s casual take about the White House being “just a building.”

“We watched this week the destruction of a symbol of this government,” Steele lamented. “Of our democracy, of our pluralistic society.”

“You’re talking about the White House?” Maher shot back. “Oh, it’s a building, Mike.”

Steele disagreed. “Okay, Bill, it’s a building maybe to you, but to a lot of Americans it’s not,” he said, sharing a personal connection. Growing up in Washington, D.C., Steele called the White House his “childhood.”

“I’m going to tell you as a young kid growing up in D.C., when my daddy took me by ‘that building,’ it meant something to me as a 10-year-old,” he recalled. “It meant something to me to grow up in a town where everybody in this country came and protested and cried and screamed and laughed. So that building, to me, was my childhood.”

Steele also slammed Trump for tearing down the East Wing “without accountability.”

Maher acknowledged, “He should have gotten the permits, but that’s how he does things. I agree, but it is just a building, first of all.”

The host pointed out that past presidents have made their own changes to the White House. “That part of the building wasn’t always there,” Maher noted. “Nixon put in a bowling alley. Obama made the tennis court a basketball court. I can’t get this mad about everything, Mike. I just can’t.”

Former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield joined the debate, arguing that the East Wing demolition is part of a larger pattern.

“If this was the only impulsive, reckless, you know, driven by his own desire for self-aggrandizement, then I would give you it’s just a building,” she said. “But it’s not. It’s part of a manner of governing that is tearing at some of the foundations, the institutional foundations in this country. And that’s scary.”

Maher ultimately agreed that Trump’s actions and attitude go beyond architecture.

“What could President Trump not do?” he asked. “He’s drunk with power.”

You can watch a clip of the panel’s “Overtime” segment above.
https://decider.com/2025/10/25/bill-maher-trump-white-house-renovation/

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Bill Maher Sounds Off on Trump’s $300 Million White House Renovation: “The Symbolism Is He’s Not Leaving”