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Harry Hamlin has been a distinguished television actor for several decades now.
(Although if you prefer reality shows to scripted series, you might know him better as the husband of Bravo-lebrity Lisa Rinna.)
But long before he amassed a devoted fan base through his work on shows like LA Law and Mad Men, Hamlin was a college student at Berkley.
Like so many college kids of the 1970s, the aspiring thespian dabbled in illicit substances.
And on at least one occasion, his experiments took him down a very dangerous path.
Hamlin opened up about the incident during a recent appearance on Rinna’s “Let’s Not Talk About the Husband” podcast.
Apparently, the show is rather inaccurately titled, because Lisa’s husband talked about himself extensively during a conversation that started with the mention of the controversial drug ketamine.
“I have never had ketamine, but … in jail, I was forced to smoke PCP,” Hamlin remarked.
“[An] upperclassman had given me 25 pills and about a 25th of an ounce of grass, and that was my payment for taking these pills,” the 74-year-old continued, adding:
Actors Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna arrive at the 65th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards held at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on September 22, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)“It was exam season, and I was at Berkley. And my upperclassmen in the fraternity house I was living in came to me before I was going down to LA for Thanksgiving, which is around exam time.
“And he said, ‘Take these pills down to another house at USC. They need these for their exams. So I take them down, and they didn’t want the pills … so I had to take them back.”
“Do you think that was very smart?” Rinna asked, prompting Hamlin to admit, “Obviously not because I ended up in jail.”
Surprisingly, it wasn’t the pills that landed Hamlin in legal trouble but the “tiny quantity of marijuana” he had on his person.
Hamlin was sentenced to 18 days behind bars, but as a college student, he was permitted to serve his sentence on weekends.
Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna attend the 26th annual Elton John AIDS Foundation’s Academy Awards Viewing Party at The City of West Hollywood Park on March 4, 2018 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)It was on his first weekend that Harry saw a group of inmates passing around a cigarette as though it were a joint. Eventually, one of the inmates insisted that he join in.
“He said, ‘Have some of this!’” Hamlin recalled, “So that’s how I was forced to have the PCP.”
“Somebody had brought in a little sack of rolling tobacco, and they had soaked it in PCP … so they were smoking it, and there was no odor. But they were high as kites,” he continued.
“I was so stoned because the guy forced me to take three or four hits of it, right?” Hamli said. “And I was completely messed up after I had that. So that’s my PCP story.”
And what a story it is!
Obviously, aspects of that particular tale are downright horrifying, but our main takeaway here is that Harry Hamlin is one of those guys who has an interesting story on just about any topic.