If you believe slurred outbursts, the DTs, and other habits of drunks can’t be done with lacerating wit and style you obviously haven’t spent enough time studying great British actors. For reasons outside the current understanding of science and philosophy, a drunk British actor, unlike any other kind of drunk, exudes satori, even when facedown-on-the-floor at a gala luncheon for War Child. Bully for Robert Sellers, who dedicates an entire tome to the idea, or at least to its finest examples in Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris and Oliver Reed.

Burton found success early in the States and was also the first to say “TTFN” to the world (with, as doctors noted, a spinal cord coated in crystallized alcohol). A feral actor who took to the boards to escape a Welsh coalmine, Burton decided early on that being a debauched millionaire was more important than art. His boozing increased as he became a specialist in bloated epics like The Robe, Cleopatra and his most lethal role of all: Mr. Elizabeth Taylor.

That affair became public when he answered the phone one day at the home of Taylor and her then-husband Eddie Fisher. A confused Fisher asked Burton what he was doing there. “What do you think I’m doing?” Burton replied. “I’m fucking your wife.” Burton claimed his drinking was to allay the empty feeling when not acting, but the author calls the late actor on it, noting that it’s just as likely Burton needed to forget about the likes of Boom!

Arguably the most insane of Hellraisers’ subjects, Richard Harris was once expelled from a Limerick grammar school for punching a nun. His career may have taken off along with the British New Wave (he starred in This Sporting Life) but, like Burton, acting was a paycheck that paid for partying. For every A Man Called Horse there was an Orca: Killer Whale.

If Harris was a natural Irish anarchist, then Oliver Reed was the public school boy desperate to keep up his hard-man act. While the others were unpredictable drunks, Reed’s drunken chaos (and nightly unveiling of his “mighty mallet” at the pub) was as rote as his acting in Canadian tax shelter films of the 1980s. Of course, he’ll always have the nude wrestling scene in Women In Love — no one can take that away from him.

Thankfully, there’s little romance-of-the-drink in Hellraisers. Sellers recounts fun moments, such as when Reed vomited on Steve McQueen, but also every death scare, court date and estranged ex. Reformed juicer Anthony Hopkins gets the deadpan quote of the book: “I went around for years thinking I was some kind of fiery Celtic soul, but I wasn’t — I was just drinking too much.”

Hellraisers is only as deep as a bar conversation. Academic arguments could easily be made that these men represent the downfall of some empire, or something. But Sellers focuses on the bare, sordid facts of four actors who kept the performance going, even after the cameras were off — if only so they wouldn’t die of boredom.

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