LOS ANGELES – Sean Young has entered rehabilitation for alcohol abuse following a weekend outburst in which she was heckling from the audience at the Directors Guild of America awards.
The 48-year-old actress was escorted from the ballroom at the Hyatt Regency in Century City Saturday night after sparring with Julian Schnabel, who was nominated for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
“Actress Sean Young voluntarily admitted herself yesterday to a rehabilitation center for treatment related to alcoholism,” a statement from Insignia PR said Tuesday. “It is understood that Young has struggled against the disease for many years.”
At the DGAs, all of the film nominees get a chance to say a few words before the top prize is announced. Schnabel, in his trademark yellow-tinted glasses, seemed moved by the occasion and was a bit slow to start, looking down at the podium and running his hands through his wild, curly hair.
That’s when Young could be heard throughout the room urging him to get on with it. Apparently rattled, Schnabel scanned the room and asked who said that, then spotted Young and suggested that she “have another cocktail.”
Then he suggested that she should finish his speech for him and started walking off the stage. Music began playing for his exit, but the audience urged him to stay and keep speaking, and he did. Young, meanwhile, was removed from the ballroom.
The guild said in a statement Tuesday: “The DGA wishes to respect Ms. Young’s privacy at this difficult time and declines further comment.”
Young made her name in the 1980s with films like “Stripes,” “Blade Runner” and “No Way Out.” But she’s become more famous for some of her more bizarre behavior, including dressing up in a homemade cat suit in her quest to secure the role of Catwoman in the 1992 sequel “Batman Returns,” which went to Michelle Pfeiffer.
She also tried to crash the Vanity Fair Oscar party in 2006.
“It was degrading,” she said in an Entertainment Weekly article last year. “But when you have nothing to lose, it’s really not that big of a deal.”