'Jackass' star Bam Margera arrested on DUI charges in California
The "Jackass" star recently spoke with the Inquirer about his struggle with alcohol.
Jackass star and West Chester natieve Bam Margera was arrested in California over the weekend for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol and was released after posting $15,000 bail.
Margera, 38, was arrested by California Highway Patrol officers just before 8 a.m. Sunday in Los Angeles. According to People magazine, officers stopped Margera because he was talking on his cellphone while driving. Police then conducted standard field sobriety tests.
Officers arrested him and booked him around 10 a.m. According to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department records, Margera was released just after 2:30 p.m. on Sunday.
As brother Jess Margera told Page Six, the Margera family is "trying to help him from across the country."
"He's with a friend out there, and we're trying to see if he wants to go to rehab or anything," Jess said. "We're trying to help him."
The arrest, Margera's first for DUI, comes after the birth of his first son, Phoenix Wolf Margera, with wife Nicole Boyd in December. The child was born as Margera was mounting a return to professional skateboarding after years of alcohol abuse, as chronicled in the Vice series Epicly Later'd last year. Margera also spoke with the Inquirer about his struggle with alcohol, saying his success on Jackass encouraged his addiction.
"It took me four beers to even feel normal. People go to rehab because drinking made them lose their job and their wife. My job is to do dumb, jackass s —, and the more shots of Crown Royal I'd do, the braver I'd be. Drinking helped me get paid," he said. "I've come to terms with the fact that it doesn't take drinking to be funny, but it took me a long time to figure that out."
Margera's friend and fellow Jackass star Ryan Dunn was killed in a drunk driving crash in West Chester in June 2011. Zachary Hartwell, a production assistant on Jackass Number Two, was also killed in the accident.
"This definitely woke me up. Coming from a 'Jackass,' I recommend to everybody, don't get behind the wheel if you've been drinking. Just don't," Margera said in an interview on 93.3 WMMR's Preston & Steve Show after Dunn's death. "Whenever you're drunk you think you're not. If you even drink at all, don't get behind the wheel."