His parents divorced when he was 3 years old.
He was sexually abused at age 7.
Growing up, he found himself spiraling deeper and deeper into addiction, using drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of his past.
But today, this American actor, comedian, and filmmaker is living a completely different life alongside his world-famous wife.
On January 2, 1975, a boy was born who would go on to become one of the most recognizable faces in the world. He was born at Beyer Hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan — his mother worked at General Motors, and his father was a car salesman. The actor says his mother named him after the wealthy playboy Diogenes Alejandro Xenos from Harold Robbins’ novel The Adventurers.
Unfortunately, the early years of his life were very turbulent. His parents divorced when he was just three years old. A few years later, something truly devastating happened to him when he was sexually abused.
He carried the secret for more than 12 years before telling anyone — an unbearable burden to hold inside, especially for a child.
”All that time, I was like … ‘It’s my fault,’ as generic as that is, I’m like, I’m gay, I must have manifested this because I’m secretly gay.’ I had all these insane thoughts for 11 years or 12 years,” he said in 2016.
He also believes it played a role in his struggles with addiction later in life. That connection was echoed by a statistic his mother — a court-appointed advocate for foster children — encountered through her work.
“If you’ve been molested, you only have a 20 percent chance of not being an addict,” the actor said. “And I was like, ‘Hm, interesting,’ because in my mind I just like to have a f—–g great time. But when you hear a statistic like that, I’m like, ‘Oh no, I was going to be an addict, period.’ ”
Amid all the darkness that seemed to shadow his career, the actor still had role models in his life—people who worked hard and tried to stay on the right path. One of the most important? His own mother. She had started at GM as a night-shift janitor, but through sheer determination and grit, she worked her way up to become the owner of four shops, overseeing publicity events for magazine journalists.
