Courtney Love Dishes On Kicking ‘All’ Drugs, Finding Religion, And Whitney Houston-like Role
There’s three things Courtney Love is most known for. She was married to late singer Kurt Cobain, is the lead singer of 90s rock band Hole, and has a turbulent and public relationship with drugs.
Ahead of her television guest appearance on the Fox show Empire, Love went on David Letterman to dish on a few things — what came out of the chat was talk about her drug use.
Characteristically candid, Love said about her sobriety, “All of it, just all of it. There are no more drugs.”
According to US Weekly, Love spent some time in rehab in the mid millennium and then got clean for good, which opened herself up to Buddhism.
She explained her awakening experience to Letterman, “What really saved me was, obviously going to meetings and stuff like that, but I’m a Buddhist. I chant and I’m really serious about it. I chant twice a day.”
Love continued to explain her healing rituals, “I’m Nichiren Buddhist so it’s Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. So I sit there in the morning, ‘Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo, Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo, Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo,’ and it changed my life. Absolutely. It turned everything around. [I chant] as much as I can… an hour… I try, I am for that. It’s like doing sit-ups, spiritual sit-ups.”
As for who Courtney Love will play on Empire? The Hole musician told the Hollywood Reporter that it’s a tribute to none other than the late Whitney Houston. On the show Love will play Elle Dallas, a recurring role, who is a rock star a part of Empire Entertainment. Describing her as a “lost” rock star who was once on top, Love goes on to explain the character’s struggles.
“I think she’s no longer relevant, and she’s not making relevant music, and because she has such a big drug problem, she’s not really paying attention to what’s relevant and what’s not; she couldn’t care less.”
Love obviously has a lot to draw on from her own experiences, but she was looking to two individuals in particular for inspiration.
“I look at Mariah [Carey] and Whitney [Houston] and some of the big divas that have sold those kind of numbers, and what Whitney was like the very short amount of time I spent with her, and Mariah, who’s great — I adore her, but she does have a retinue; she’s an industry unto herself. I kind of wanted to bring some of that [to Elle].”
Courtney Love makes her debut on Empire tonight on Fox.
[Image via Fox]
