After several years of hard-won sobriety and reported stability, long-troubled TV star Heather Locklear is drinking again, acting erratically and using Ozempic to rapidly lose weight, leaving her family “very worried” and feeling “helpless,” the Daily Mail is reporting.
Sources close to Locklear’s family are expressing these concerns after the Daily Mail published photos of her last week, which showed her looking haggard and as if she’s in a world of her own. The photos show the once luminous “Melrose Place” star outside a Malibu office building, balancing on a ledge, sprinting across the street and talking to herself.
Heather Locklear appears distressed, bizarrely walks on ledge of office building https://t.co/MapBso8XSY pic.twitter.com/xLhbDx1eqE
— Page Six (@PageSix) July 4, 2023
“Heather is drinking,” a source told the Daily Mail. “The family is very worried. Everyone feels helpless.” Those feeling helpless include Locklear’s ex-husband Richie Sambora and her 25-year-old daughter Ava Sambora.
“Tequila has always been her drink,” the source also said. “She can’t stay away from it.”
The source also said that Locklear, 61, has been taking Ozempic, the diabetes medication that’s become popular with celebrities and influencers seeking help to rapidly lose weight. It’s easy to believe that staying slender would be an imperative to Locklear, who became a star on “Dynasty” in the 1980s and on “Melrose Place” for playing attractive, petite bad girls and femme fatales.
“She’s also on Ozempic and obsesses over her weight,” the source said. “She’s lost 40 pounds.”
Heather Locklear drinking again, taking Ozempic as ‘worried’ family feels ‘helpless’: report https://t.co/wICrtqTgFp pic.twitter.com/ItEKtnZNBs
— Page Six (@PageSix) July 5, 2023
However, another source, who told Page Six she’s one of Locklear’s best friends, said that she wasn’t drinking again and hasn’t had a drink “for years.” The friend, Sharan Magnuson, said the photos capture Locklear shortly after she received some “upsetting news” of an unspecified nature. While that news caused Locklear “upset,” she is otherwise not “troubled.”
“Everyone is allowed a bad day,” said Magnuson, a former film studio public relations executive who has known the actor since they met in acting class in 1981.
Overall, Locklear has been “feeling good” and is “totally lucid,” but was hurt about the allegations that she was drinking again, Magnuson said.
“I just FaceTimed with Heather today and she’s doing great,” Magnuson told Page Six. “We text all the time and we had lunch together only a few weeks ago, we had the best time, we laughed and reminisced. Heather looked fantastic, she was lucid – she’s the best she’s looked in years.”
Locklear’s fall from grace began with a DUI after she and Sambora split in 2006, the Daily Mail said. The next decade was filled with hospitalizations, several arrests, and stints in rehab. At one point, her family reportedly asked attorneys to explore the possibility of putting her under a mental health conservatorship.
Between February and June 2018, her family called 911 four times, reporting that she was intoxicated, suicidal, engaging in dangerous, out-of-control behavior and otherwise being combative with her live-in boyfriend Chris Heisser or with her parents. Following one of those calls, in June 2018, she was taken to jail and booked on suspicion of battery on a sheriff’s deputy and a first responder. But several hours after her release from jail, her family called 911 to report that she had suffered a possible overdose. That’s when she reportedly agreed to enter a long-term care facility voluntarily.
More than a year later, Locklear pleaded no contest to charges related to her attacks on first responders. She was ordered to compete a 30-day stay at a residential mental health facility in lieu of serving 120 days in jail, the Associated Press reported.
The source told the Daily Mail that Locklear’s relapse may be due to her receiving what was perceived as a light sentence.
“Heather got off so easy with no probation or accountability after beating up cops and then threatening EMT ambulance drivers,” the source told the Daily Mail. Because Locklear faced “no accountability,” she hasn’t been motivated to truly recover, the source suggested. She instead spends her time “hiding out” in her hillside estate outside Los Angeles and drinking, the source added.
Her behavior has been “unfair” to Heisser, who’s now her fiancé and who struggles with alcohol addiction himself, the source said. “(Chris) has to drive her for mandatory errands and try to sustain his career while lying to family and friends consistently hiding her alcohol and drug problems,” the source said.
The couple reportedly told Locklear’s friends that she was drinking again, but she has yet to get help, the source said.
This story has been updated.
