Black-ish star Jenifer Lewis has opened up about her battle with sex addiction.
The Hollywood veteran, 69, recently appeared on the Baby, This is Keke Palmer podcast, where she admitted to sleeping with dozens of different men over the course of her career.
‘There’s no shame in my game,’ she said. ‘Yeah b***h, it happened. I slept with 63 men. Now that was fabulous.’
Despite enjoying herself at the time, Lewis said that in retrospect she wishes she’d known that ‘my body was a temple’.
‘I never knew it was a problem. I thought everybody was f***ing everything,’ she said.
‘Look, when you get off a Broadway stage with all that ovation and applause and people praising you … what are you gonna do?’ she continued.
Black-ish star Jenifer Lewis opened up about her battle with sex addiction on Keke Palmer’s podcast this week
‘You’re either gonna go and stick something in your arm, you’re gonna smoke something, you’re gonna drink something, to come down from that high.
‘So I used to just go and find a gorgeous man and f**k the s**t out of him!’
She added, ‘I mean, that’s what I did. I would have sex. Sex was the drug.’
Lewis says that she finally changed her promiscuous ways after the AIDS epidemic hit, which led to a personal epiphany.
‘I went, “Wait a minute. There’s got to be more to life than just me clawing at the void of who am I, and what am I?” ‘ she said.
The star then embarked on a journey of self-discovery to find the meaning of real love.
‘I don’t know how I’ve sustained in this business. I don’t know how I got to be 69, but here I am and I feel better than I ever have. I’m so happy in my life,’ she gushed.
Lewis has been engaged four times but never married. She has an adopted daughter named Charmaine Lewis.
The Hollywood veteran, 69, admitted to sleeping with dozens of different men over the course of her career
While Lewis is best known for her role in Black-ish, she’s also starred in countless classic films and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the early 1990s. She initially resisted taking medication because she was concerned that she’d lose her ‘edge’, but the performer eventually relented and is now medicated.
In 2020, she was one of four women who was conned out of nearly $400,000 by a romance scammer.
California gym owner Antonio Mariot Wilson agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud after he convinced the women to invest tens of thousands of dollars in a sham sound design business, Ultimate FX, and a fake software company, 2nd Life.
Wilson, whose aliases included Dr. Tony Mariot and Brice Carrington, met three of the victims on Bumble and other online dating apps between May 2015 and October 2018, according to the Department of Justice.
He first met Lewis at a Los Angeles-area gym where he worked as a manager.
Lewis is pictured with Tracee Ellis Ross in an episode of Black-ish
Lewis is also friendly with Michelle Obama and has even appeared on the former First Lady’s podcast
Wilson was accused of stealing $50,000 from Lewis, who played Ruby on the ABC sitcom Black-ish. Lewis later sued the gym and settled for $13,000.
Of the incident, Lewis said Wilson researched her on the internet before approaching her at a LA Fitness, and eventually charmed her into starting a romantic relationship.
Three months into their romance he is said to have persuaded her to hand over cash to invest in a film industry project after she fell for his line that he was an Oscar-winner, despite the fact he was working as a front desk manager at a health club.
With each woman, the Santa Monica man wooed them into romantic relationships before convincing them to invest in his businesses by making misleading and inaccurate statements.
While Lewis is most recently best known for her role on Black-ish, she has a long career spanning countless hit films.
The actress has starred in Beaches, Sister Act, Poetic Justice, The Preacher’s Wife, Cast Away, Girlfriends and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
