For years, Sizemore struggled with addiction and faced legal turmoil, including several arrests for drug possession. In 2010, the actor appeared Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew with ex-girlfriend Heidi Fleiss, who he was convicted of battering and harassing in 2003. (He denied the charges, for which he was given probation.)
Sizemore faced more legal trouble in 2018, when a 26-year-old actress from Utah sued Sizemore for alleged abuse of her when she was 11 years old during production of Born Killers. The actor denied her accusation and the lawsuit was later dismissed.
Sizemore has been open about his personal struggles. “I’ve been trying to get sober since 1991,” he told Fox News in 2021. “It became really big news much later than that, but I was trying to stop. I’ve had a problem for a long time. I had periods, long periods, of sobriety and I would end up relapsing.”
He continued, “I still go to meetings and work my steps, but I had reached a place in my life where I knew I had to stop. I couldn’t be arrogant anymore. If I wanted to reach a nice and pleasant old age, I had to stop. And if I wanted to watch my kids grow up, I needed to reach a place where I knew it was over.”
Amid his struggles, Sizemore continued his acting career with roles on TV shows such as Netflix’s Karate Kid sequel series Cobra Kai, Showtime’s 2017 revival of David Lynch‘s Twin Peaks and the comedy Barbee Rehab, which debuted in 2022 and also stars Bai Ling and Janice Dickinson. Prior to his death, he worked on more than two dozen projects, mostly independent films such as the horror flick Impuratus, set for release March 3.