Joe Pantoliano, aka “Joey Pants,” has a marvelous mnemonic for mental health.
“You need three things — masturbation, medication and meditation,” he exclusively told Page Six at the Tribeca Festival 30th anniversary premiere of “Bound.”
The “Sopranos” alum further explained that he takes a “wonderful supplement,” doesn’t do meditation and “my wife [Nancy Sheppard] takes care of [the masturbation].”
Instead of medication, Pantoliano regularly takes walks, explaining that “when I went to McLean Hospital, the brain hospital, they told me that a brisk 15-minute walk is equivalent to like 90 milligrams of Prozac, so I walk every day.”
Pantoliano added that for years he suffered from addictions.
“Success,” was one of his addictions, he explained, “and then sex and then alcohol.”
“Finding things that make this feeling go away. I thought if I could become successful, then this feeling that was in the pit of my soul would go away.”
Instead, Pantoliano said that he “crashed and burned, didn’t die, and I guess discovered my shortcomings; they weren’t terrible defects, they were, you know, just mental illness.”
The “Matrix” star, 74, has long been open about his mental health struggles.
Last year, he told Page Six that he suffered from depression for close to a decade before his diagnosis and would self-medicate with “seven deadly symptoms.”
“Alcohol, what was available, women, you know, risky behavior, act first and then ask questions second,” he explained.
Pantoliano, who was diagnosed with clinical depression in 2007 and has since written two books about his mental health issues, founded an organization in 2009 called “No Kidding, Me Too!” which aims to remove the stigma surrounding mental health.
Meanwhile, the Emmy winner confessed to being slightly gobsmacked to be celebrating “Bound” all these years after its release.
“I had no idea that I’d be talking to anybody 30 years later. I did not expect to be alive, you know,” he shared. “The fact that this movie is being celebrated. I had no idea that I would be lucky enough.
“I didn’t know how talented the Wachowskis were,” he said, referring to writer/director siblings Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski. “You know, it was a good part, and I wanted to have a good part in a movie, and I was hoping that it would be good, so it was very naive of me.”
The noir thriller also stars Gina Gershon, Jennifer Tilly and Chris Meloni.
