Cary Elwes Shares Andre The Giant Drinking Stories

– The Daily Beast has an interview with actor Cary Elwes at this link, who starred with Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride. He talked about Andre passing out in the middle of a lobby of a hotel after the first script reading:

“They decided that there was no shifting him,” Elwes recalled. “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.”