Owen Wilson, who lent his voice to the role of Lightning McQueen in Disney/Pixar’s Cars, was taken to a hospital in Santa Monica Sunday night and is said to be in critical condition. No official statement has been released, but various tabloids are reporting that the actor attempted suicide by cutting his wrist and overdosing on pills. Again, these are tabloids, so these rumors should be taken with a grain of salt.
Wilson got his big break in director Wes Anderson’s debut feature, Bottle Rocket, a cult favorite that also features brothers Luke and Andrew Wilson. He has since appeared in a couple dozen films, including Armageddon, Shanghai Noon, Starsky and Hutch and the recent blockbuster comedies The Wedding Crashers and Night at the Museum. On television, he voiced the role of Rhett Van Der Graaf in the ‘Luanne Virgin 2.0’ episode of FOX’s animated series King of the Hill.
In 2002, Wilson received Academy Award and BAFTA nominations for co-writing The Royal Tenenbaums with director Wes Anderson. In that film, a character played by Luke Wilson attempts suicide by slitting his wrists. Owen recently reteamed with Anderson for the upcoming feature The Darjeeling Limited, and is also set to appear in Steven Brill’s Drillbit Taylor, a comedy co-written by Knocked Up‘s Seth Rogen. At the time of his hospitalization, he was working on the Ben Stiller-directed comedy Tropic Thunder with Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Nick Nolte and Bill Hader.
