10 Best Booze-Guzzling Movie Characters

Clay is a successful PR man for whom drinking comes with the territory. He meets a secretary, Kirsten (Lee Remmick), a teetotaller whom he lures into bed and, with that, into the kingdom of booze. Clay, we learn, is a predatory drinker: he uses alcohol to get what he wants.

Soon, the pair are drinking heavily together until things spiral out of control. Clay is demoted, but alongside his career, the booze threatens to destroy his marriage too. In fact, Clay turns his wife into an alcoholic in the same way he turned himself into one.

Clay manages to temporarily dry out via AA but the tragedy is his wife can’t follow suit. Whenever Clay tries to help her he wants to drink - it’s as though they feed off one another’s desire to get intoxicated. At one point the tragic Kristen burns the apartment down whilst drunk, nearly killing their child. Clay takes the lone route to sobriety, leaving his wife and kids behind.

Lemmon is fantastic as Clay. Whether in the grips of delirium tremens in the sanatorium, or soul-searching into his reflection in a window, unable to recognize himself, Lemmon dramatizes the plight of the alcoholic and the constant struggle between addiction, sobriety, and relapse.