8 Movie Alcoholics Who Need A Sponsor

The Clays, “Days of Wine and Roses”

Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick play a happy and newly in love couple—who inadvertently drive each other to full-blown alcoholism. This movie isn’t subtle, but with the talents in front of and behind the camera make the most of the material, and even when it starts to verge on anti-alcohol hysteria (a scene with Lemmon in a straitjacket comes to mind), it has emotional impact.

Martha and George, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”

Famous off-screen couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton play the drunk couple in this harrowing drama, although it’s up in the air whether or not they were ever “happy.” They are definitely addicted to alcohol, though. Unlike some of these other movies, this treats alcoholism in a more subtle way—it’s never referenced in the dialog. But alcohol flows in virtually every scene, so most viewers have no choice but to see this as one of the most eviscerating portraits of addiction ever captured on film.