Stephen Dorff has said that death of his younger brother changed his life and left him “crushed”.
The True Detective leading man has said that working on the show “saved” him following family tragedy.
Dorff was devastated when he lost his younger brother, country music songwriter Andrew, to a fatal accident in 2016.
The actor, who has starred in Blade and Somewhere, said the shock death left him angered at the loss which “didn’t make sense”.
Dorff, who admits his “weird” career is one of ups and downs, said being cast in True Detective helped him following his experience of personal tragedy, and spared him slipping into a “dark place”.
He said: “I’d say this show saved me in a way, I feel like this role saved me. When my little [brother] passed out of nowhere, this tragic accident, it just crushed me, changed my life, in a different way to when we lost my mom.
“Because we were younger, and we saw that coming, we had time to spend with her, we had a few years where we were able to prepare ourselves for that.
“When something happened to my brother, it didn’t make sense, I’m still pretty upset and angry about it and I find that the best thing that she would want me to do would not to be in a dark place.
You separate yourself from something when you name it. pic.twitter.com/XoHfKTJS48
— True Detective (@TrueDetective) January 23, 2019
“[It] would be to do good work and be around people that support me and love me, and vice versa. So this opportunity gave me that in such a big way.”
Dorff stars as Arkansas State Investigator Roland West, alongside the Oscar-winning Mahershala Ali.
He sees his casting in the third series of True Detective as another high-point in a career of peaks and troughs.
Dorff said: “Everybody’s like ‘he’s back’, and then I, like, fall off a cliff somewhere. And then ‘I’m back’ with True Detective. But I don’t know, I’ve had a very weird career, but I’m still around, never been arrested, still going strong.”
True Detective Season 3 Episode 1 & 2 are available now on streaming service NOW TV, with a new episode released every Monday and on demand.