Cary Elwes recently sat down to talk The Princess Bride with The Daily Beast, and he had a couple pretty choice Andre the Giant drinking stories to share, because of course he did. Anybody who’s ever met Andre the Giant, even briefly, has an insane drinking story to tell about him, because, well, drinking insane amounts of booze was pretty much his full-time hobby.
Here’s Cary telling the story of Andre getting the VIP treatment when he passed out in a hotel lobby…
“They decided that there was no shifting him. There’s no shifting a 550-pound, 7-foot-4 giant, so they had a choice: either call the authorities, and they didn’t want that kind of publicity, or wait for him to wake up, which was the wiser decision. It should be pointed out that Andre didn’t drink for the sake of drinking—Andre was in a lot of pain, God bless him. His back was injured from carrying all that weight around, and from having other wrestlers breaking chairs over his back. He was due to have an operation right after the shoot, and his doctor didn’t know what kind of pain medication to give him because of his size, so the only way that he could deal with the pain was to drink alcohol. And it didn’t affect him at all. He didn’t flub a line or miss a day. The guy could handle his liquor, let me tell ya.”
Poor guy. I hope he rested well and dreamt of large women.
Elwes also described being subjected to Andre’s drink of choice, “The American”…
“You mention this special drink he made, “The American,” which consisted of 40 ounces of various liquors poured into a pitcher, and he’d drink several of these in a single sitting.
I’ve never tasted airplane fuel, but I imagine it’s very close to what that must taste like. It’s very potent indeed, and I remember coughing a lot. But to him, it was like chugging water.”
Really, there’s only one response to a good Andre the Giant drinking story…
via The Daily Beast
