David Arquette Admits He's Having 'Nervous Breakdown'

Dec. 16, 2010 — -- David Arquette feels like he's losing it.

Following several public confessions about his separation from wife Courteney Cox and news about his relationship with cocktail waitress/aspiring actress Jasmine Waltz, Arquette returned to the Howard Stern Show for the third time since his breakup, this time admitting he has a problem.

"I definitely am having a nervous breakdown," Arquette, 39, told Stern, according to the shock jock's website. He later added it was more mid-life crisis than nervous breakdown.

But according to US Weekly, the "Scream" actor revealed during the one-hour chat that he was seeing a psychiatrist weekly and that "everybody is worried and concerned about me."

Meanwhile, his marriage is in shambles. "It's not over but it seems like it's over," he told Stern, according to the show's website.

Arquette told Stern he recently had a revelation: "When I drink I become a maniac."

"I've been drinking a lot because I'm heartbroken," he added. "It's really a personal, traumatic thing."

Arquette said he hit bottom at a recent holiday party hosted by Adam Sandler, in which he drunkenly called Tom Cruise "Sean."

"I was a little wasted," Arquette said. "Someone says 'Hi David!', and I said, 'Hi Sean!' Then I realized it was Tom Cruise. And his beautiful wife [Katie Holmes] was there."

Apparently Cruise was unoffended. "Tom was cool about it...I was so embarrassed," Arquette said. "I was like 'I gotta get the f*** out of here.'"

Arquette told Stern he has since sobered up. "I'm definitely not drinking for a long time," he said. "When you wake up and reality hits you, it's hard."

Admitting that he's lonely, Arquette said, "I want love in my life. I need love in my life."

And, though he said it before -- Cox, 46, "didn't want to be my mother -- but I kind of need a mother."

Father to Coco, 6, Arquette would also like more kids. But instead of saying he hoped to have more with Cox, he told Stern he wishes the mom could be his ex-girlfriend Drew Barrymore.

"I know she is with Justin Long and everything, but how cool would an Arquette-Barrymore child be?" he said. "From a pure breeding standpoint."

As always, Arquette's candor makes for great headlines, but it's not clear whether it will help or hurt him.

David Arquette's Oversharing

In October, after the actor shared with Stern perhaps a bit too much about his relationship, he posted a string of messages on his Twitter account amounting to an apology:

"I went on Howard Stern yesterday to provide clarity and honesty about what I'm experiencing," Arquette wrote in a series of tweets. "But while doing that I shared too much...it's alright for me to be honest about my own feelings but in retrospect some of the information I provided involved others and for that I am sorry and humbled. ... I'm sure Courteney and myself will emerge from this painful time better people for what we have learned."

Arquette's Tuesday tell-all left little to the imagination.

"We're not having sex, and I completely understand," Arquette told Stern about his relationship with Cox. "She's in a place of wanting to be real and emotional. She's an emotional being. She's an amazing woman. If it doesn't feel right, she doesn't feel like bonding in that way."

He continued to overshare about his sex life, although it seemed as if Arquette himself wasn't sure about the details.

"[Courteney] knows she's not f***ing me, and she's like, 'Listen, I want you to be able to do whatever you have to do,'" he said. Arquette admitted to sleeping with Waltz, whom he called "the girl in the paper," "once ... maybe twice."

Arquette added that Cox, 46, wanted him to grow up.

"She says that to me: 'I don't want to be your mother anymore,'" he said. "I appreciated that. I respected that. I've been going to therapy. I'm trying to grow up. I'm trying to be true to myself. Trying to figure out myself and my world, as is she."

He also revealed how he broke the news to their 6-year-old daughter, Coco.

"We went to a beach and had a picnic," Arquette said. "[I] explained to her that we're grown-ups, and a lot of the time when grown-ups are growing up, they need to figure out their lives."

Arquette hopes the separation won't end in divorce.

"We're still working it out," he told Stern. "We're being very sweet and kind to each other."

But with both parties free to move on -- Arquette told Stern that he and Cox agreed they could be intimate with other people during their separation -- reconciliation may be less than likely.

"You've got two very different kinds of people who have probably not seen eye to eye for years. After the infatuation wore off, they probably realized that," said Helen Fisher, chief scientific adviser to Chemistry.com and author of the relationship analysis tome "Why Him, Why Her?"

"She's what I call the director, he's more of a negotiator," Fisher said. "I'm not surprised that she's being practical about this, and he's being syrupy, because the director type tends to be decisive and tough-minded. She probably found that he was sleeping with someone else and she's not willing to negotiate that. She would probably rather find someone else."

David Arquette's Out-of-the-Box Past

Cox has yet to offer details as candid as Arquette's. According to RadarOnline.com, after their separation, she may be engaging in a more-than-professional relationship with her "Cougar Town" co-star, Brian Van Holt, 40.

Arquette's current fixation appears to be Waltz, a 28-year-old lithe brunette who could serve as Megan Fox's stunt double (and for that matter, looks not unlike a younger version of Cox). Waltz has been romantically linked to a number of celebrities, including Ryan Seacrest, Chris Pine, Jesse McCartney and Paris Hilton's ex-boyfriend, Doug Reinhardt. She's also infamous for reportedly punching Lindsay Lohan at a Hollywood nightclub in July.

Waltz has a connection to Cox: In 2008, she appeared in two episodes of "Dirt," the FX show Cox produced and starred in. At the time, David Arquette was also an executive producer of the series.

Like Arquette, Waltz seems prone to oversharing. She uses her Twitter account to make public such musings as "Why do u have to bake cookies? What happens when u put cookie dough in the microwave?" and "Hi I'm about to sweat my own bootay- its lookin hot!" (The latter tweet included a picture of the body part in question.)

If Arquette's adopting a tell-all attitude and a woman with a similar sensibility in the midst of a crumbling marriage seems slightly odd, maybe that's because his family has a history of out-of-the-box behavior.

He was born on a spiritual commune in Winchester, Va. His brother, Robert, became a transwoman and actress, Alexis, in the 1980s. His other siblings -- Patricia, Rosanna and Richmond -- are also involved in the acting industry.

Arquette himself has long marched to the beat of his own drummer. In 2000, he literally leaped into the ring after filming the World Championship Wrestling produced movie "Ready to Rumble." Later that year, he became the WCW World Heavyweight Champion and inspired a parody song about his dual acting and wrestling career, "You Cannot Kill David Arquette."