Christian Slater, once a ’90s heart-throb known for playing bad boys, is relishing his role as a later-in-life dad.
Does Christian Slater have any kids?
It was confirmed Slater and his wife, Brittany Lopez, 35, already parents to daughter Lena, who turned 5 this month, welcomed their second child together, a son, in July.
Slater, who has just turned 55, is also dad to son Jaden, 25, and daughter Eliana, 23, who he shares with his ex-wife, journalist and producer Ryan Haddon.
“I mean, it’s just different,” he told People magazine about his second crack at parenting at the Blink Twice premiere on August 8. “The whole thing is different. I’m certainly a lot more present and I just love it.
“I think I was more scared of it the first go around and a little bit more confused, and I was very distracted. Now, it’s all I really think about, and all I really care about, and all I want to be around. I’m happy to be in that situation.”
Slater’s personal life hasn’t always been so straightforward. After acting as a child, he scored his big break opposite Winona Ryder in 1989 black comedy Heathers, kicking off a decade-long professional hot streak that featured a string of hits like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), True Romance (1993) and Broken Arrow (1996).
With a reputation for raucousness, his personal demons and drama began to overshadow his professional life. A handful of run-ins with the law led to him hitting a low point in August 1997 when he was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend and a police officer. He served 59 days of a three-month sentence.
In 2000, he married Haddon, and they raised their kids together until they separated in January 2005 – their divorce was finalised in late 2006.
“Having kids, being a dad, getting to have some great adventures with my kids is the best,” Slater, who got sober in 2005, said in a 2008 interview with US Today. “It’s the best possible remedy for anything.”
In 2009, at a resort in the Florida Keys, Slater met Lopez, who worked at an auction house in Miami.
“I was smitten,” he told Esquire in 2020. “Gobsmacked.”
They exchanged vows at a Miami courthouse in December 2013 and later had an intimate winter wedding in Illinois.
With his personal life humming, his career took off again in 2015 when he co-starred alongside Rami Malek in Mr. Robot. The show was a hit, and Slater won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film in 2016 and was nominated in the same category on two other occasions. His most important supporting role, however, was at home after Lena was born in 2019.
“My wife was happy to see that I did possess some skills, that I was able to contribute something, and that I did know how to change some diapers,” he told Today a few months after she was born. “She wasn’t expecting me to be as involved as I have been.”
With the chance to do it all again, Slater, who is lined up to star with Patrick Dempsey and Sarah Michelle Gellar in the Paramount+ prequel series Dexter: Original Sin, couldn’t help but rave about his youngest daughter, Lena, on the Blink Twice red carpet.
“She’s just cute … she’s a real passionate, excited person,” he told People. “I mean, she skateboards, she ice skates, she climbs rock walls, she does aerobics, she plays tennis and she’s 5. We can’t stop her. She just has a real zest and passion for life that’s very infectious and makes me very excited.”
And while he is keen to be an involved father, when Lena was born, Slater noticed parenting has gotten more “complicated” since the first time he had a newborn back in 1999.
“I thought your kid could get a couple of germs and be fine, build up the immune system,” he joked to presenter James Corden in 2019. “But now you have to wash everything.” With the arrival of his latest child, and five years of practice with Lena, Slater might be more prepared for the washing duties this time around
