Confession: Cory Monteith does such a fabulous job of playing a jockstrapped, all-American goldenboy on "Glee," we'd always just kinda assumed that he was typecast. And man, were we wrong! Because as it turns out, Cory has a law-breaking bad-boy past that makes Robert Downey Jr. and Colin Farrell look like a pair of pants-wetting amateurs. And in the latest issue of Parade, he's not afraid to open up about just how f'ed up his life used to be.
"Anything and everything, as much as possible," he said—talking about (gasp!) his battle with drug addiction. "I had a serious problem."
So serious, in fact, that he attended 12 different schools before dropping out for good at age 16. Ouch. And it gets worse: After his friends and family staged an intervention, Cory went to rehab...only to immediately resume all the activities that landed him there in the first place.
"I did the stint but then went back to doing exactly what I left off doing," he said.
And ultimately, it took the threat of hard time—courtesy of a family member from whom he'd stolen "a significant amount of money"—for Cory to get his life back on track.
"I was done fighting myself," he admitted. "I finally said, 'I’m gonna start looking at my life and figure out why I’m doing this.'"
Fortunately for him—and for swooning Gleeks everywhere—that first tough step was the start of a journey that led Cory to a stable lifestyle, an acting coach and his eventual casting as Finn. And now, fresh from both getting his high school diploma and reuniting with his dad for the first time in 10 years, Cory said he's looking forward to a lifestyle that's anything but wrong-side-of-the-tracks. His vision of a perfect future?
"I want to get married and have children and live happily ever after."
Say it with us now: AWWWWWWWWWW.
Did you get a little misty at Cory's sweet underdog story? Tell us in the comments and on Twitter!
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