Turkey teeth, botox, hunting for aliens, and having baths surrounded with scented candles. It’s a world away from Robbie Williams’s drug, drink and sex-fuelled days during Take That’s hey’day in the 1990s.
Williams’ hell-raising rock star life during which he bedded more than a hundred women and was drinking a bottle of vodka a day is well and truly behind him – and his wife of 13 years Ayda Field has played a huge part in him turning his life around.
The 49-year-old now describes himself as a ‘Coca-Cola lite agoraphobic’ and would rather eat a tangerine than have sex.
He shares pictures to his three million Instagram followers of himself indulging in a zen-like vegan lifestyle, playing with his four children and their doll house.
And, he talks about his back ‘being full of arthritis’ and having plastic surgery as his 50th birthday nears in February.
It’s a life in stark contrast from the cocaine and vodka binges and several stints in rehab he had in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Robbie Williams, 49, and his American actress wife of 13 years Ayda Field, 44, who he credits with for saving his life
In its stark contrast to his hell-raising days of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he openly admitted he battled with drugs and alcohol addiction (Pictured in London in 1999)
The former Take That singer has candidly opened up about his darker days and mental health battles as he tried to cope with the enormous fame he experienced – with a four-part Netflix docu-series charting his roller-coaster career set to be released on November 8.
A year after he embarked on what would turn out to be a hugely successful solo career following his split from the boy band in 1995, he went on a six-day vodka and cocaine binge where he was vomiting ‘black bile’ and didn’t sleep for 144 hours, believing he was ‘indestructible’.
His drugs and alcohol battle was described by Williams as a ‘fast track to death’ and has seen him have several stints in rehab, including in 2007 after taking speed, acid, heroin, cocaine and ‘heart-stopping’ amounts of prescription drugs, reported The Sun.
Williams has previously revealed his ongoing battles with body dysphoria and anorexia, which he discusses in the Netflix series and how one time he was surviving on just one banana a day.
His love-life was just as frantic and saw him date a string of high-profile celebrities including Spice Girls Melanie C and Geri Horner, Lindsay Lohan, and All Saints’ Nicole Appleton, while rumours swirled he bedded Kylie Minogue and Nicole Kidman.
Today, Williams’ life has taken a complete turn and he has channelled his addictive personality into living a healthy lifestyle with his American actress wife Ayda, their four children – Teddy, Charlie, Coco, and Beau – through exercise, art, pickleball – and searching for aliens.
Gone are the days of drugs and alcohol, with the star, thought to have a net worth of £155 million, instead relaxing in soapy hot baths surrounding in lit candles and proud to be 23 years sober.
Williams pictured at the Nordoff Robbins Silver Clef Awards in London, in 1995. He split form Take That that year and 12 months later he went on a vodka and cocaine six-day binge where he was vomiting ‘black bile’
The former Take That singer holds a bottle of Champagne in a car as he is spotted out and about in London in 1997
His drugs and alcohol battle was described by Williams as a ‘fast track to death’ and has seen him have several stints in rehab (Pictured in 1999 leaving the Hanover Grand nightclub, in London)
Williams’ battles with addiction and mental health came during the height of his fame in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Pictured performing with Tom Jones at the Brit Awards in 2008)
Williams walks through Heathrow Airport with his face covered with a plastic mask of himself
His love-life was just as frantic and saw him date a string of high-profile celebrities including Spice Girls Melanie C and Geri Horner (pictured in 2000 St Tropez, France in 2000)
A weary-eyed Williams smokes a cigarette at the Quentin Tarantino Party at the Ministry of Sound in 1996
The Angels singer poses with bikini-clad models wearing black high heels in 1996 for a 7Up advert
He’s turned to being vegan with his healthy meals being cooked up by a personal chef that are packed full of his five-a-day, while images on Instagram show him enjoying playing golf and boxing.
He has even rubbed shoulders with royalty having attended Princess Eugenie’s wedding to Jack Brooksbank at Windsor Castle, with his daughter, Teddy, a bridesmaid.
Asked what caused such a dramatic change, Williams often returns to the same answer: Ayda.
Appearing on the Jonathan Ross show in 2020, the Angels hitmaker got emotional as he credited her with saving his life.
‘I look back at 15 years of being with my wife, she did, she gave me a life,’ he said.
‘Here I am on the telly getting emotional. She absolutely did.’
That same year he spoke candidly about his relationship with his wife during an appearance on Jessie and Lennie Ware’s Table Manners podcast.
The singer admitted it makes him want to ‘cry’ when he talks about Ayda as he revealed he feels ‘safe’ with her and their ‘mini tribe’ of children.
He said: ‘It’s a very special thing to have. In a very turbulent, unsafe world, our mini tribe, you know that saying people say “nothing outside can affect you when inside is safe”, and that’s how I feel. Nothing out there can hurt me when I am with her.’
Today, Williams’ life has taken a 360 degree turn and he has channelled his addictive personality into living a healthy lifestyle with his American actress wife Ayda and their four children
Williams, dressed in a black cape, and Ayda attend the Giambattista Valli show at the Haute Couture Fashion Week, Paris, in 2022
From left to right: Laura Dunn, Beau Dunn, Ayda Field, and Williams at a Pickleball Tournament in Los Angeles, California, in April 2023
The singer posts images of his healthier lifestyle to his three million followers on his Instagram page
As well as pickleball, Williams exercises with boxing. He once challenged Oasis frontman to a boxing match in 2000
Gone are the days of drugs and alcohol, with the star, thought to have a net worth of £155 million, instead relaxing in soapy hot baths surrounding in lit candles and proud to be 23 years sober
Williams plays with his children and their doll house at his home in one heartwarming post on his Instagram page
Perhaps one of the more bizarre episodes in recent years saw him live stream snippets of his wife’s labour where he sings to her.
But constant reminders of his battles are never too far away. Ayda still locks away painkillers out of fear he could relapse.
He told the On The Edge podcast with Andrew Gold: ‘Something’s always lurking around the corner and I still can’t be trusted with pills.
‘The wife has to put them behind lock and key… They can be there for 18 months, every single day. Vicodin, whatever, every day, see them, go to bed.’
He admits it’s lucky he’s still alive, but nowadays Williams’ life appears calmer, content, and settled.
In one recent Instagram post he wrote: ‘Im not worried about the future. It’s amazing Im still here …
‘My memory being s***,my thoughts being cloudy, my back being full of arthritis, My eyesight going, My looks fading, the elasticity of my skin being f*****, the hair thinning….ect,ect,ect.
‘Im still here ,were still here….Still, so much to do….’
His partying antics have taken a toll on his health, though, with Williams revealing in a recent interview with The Sun how they had left him feeling ‘knackered’.
‘The hair is thinning, the testosterone has left the building, the serotonin is not really here and the dopamine said goodbye a long time ago,’ he said.
‘I’ve used up all of the natural good stuff. I’ve got the manopause.’
So what does he want to celebrate his 50th? Apparently he’s going to gift himself a £20,000 neck life and some ‘Turkey teeth’ with the star already having had botox.
As for what else is ahead in the future, Williams has previously spoken of his fascination with UFOs and that ‘something is up’ and wants to go on a ‘TV quest’ in search of finding out if there’s anything behind his mental health.
He once lavishly rented out a plane used by rapper Snoop Dogg and asked journalist Jon Ronson to go UFO hunting with him and wanted the documentary-maker to set up a night for him to spend a night in a haunted house in the search for ghosts. He changed his mind on the latter.
Speaking on Alan Buxton’s podcast in January, Williams told of how he spotted an ‘penalty box-sized’ unidentified flying object 16 years ago when he was completely sober.
‘This was flat and it appeared over a tree. It was matt black underneath had yellow stripes like The Hacienda (London nightclub).
‘I didn’t think “little green men”, I thought “there’s a bit of tech we are not being told about”. I thought it was the American government.’
He has even rubbed shoulders with royalty having attended Princess Eugenie’s wedding to Jack Brooksbank at Windsor Castle, with his daughter, Teddy, a bridesmaid
He’s turned to being vegan with his healthy meals being cooked up by a personal chef that are packed full of his five-a-day
He also spoke of another time when a 33ft elongated strip of ‘negative light’ had passed through while he was ‘whittling’ lyrics for a song about alien abduction at his now former Hollywood home in San Fernando Valley.
But he says nothing has happened ever since his children have been born.
‘It is thrilling see those things,’ he said. ‘If I get to stay alive for another 25 years it will be a TV quest I will go on where I will go and examine my own mental illness or maybe there’s something to it
‘I think something is up. I read everything to do with conspiracies, UFOs, with Bigfoot, with ghosts, with ghouls, with absolute everything… folklore, myths, blah. blah, blah. I don’t believe anything other than something is up.’
