Jerry O'Connell reveals the powerful bedroom ultimatum that finally ended his smoking habit
Jerry O'Connell went to extreme measures to quit smoking.
In a recent appearance on Sophia Bush's podcast, "Work In Progress," the 52-year-old actor discussed how a threat from his wife, Rebecca Romijn, ultimately led to his decision to quit smoking cigarettes.
"I struggled with nicotine for decades, struggled with it. Had to get hypnotized. I haven't had a ciggy in like fourteen years," he said. "My wife said she would not touch me if I smoked. And that lasted about two months. And by the way, no contact. My wife said, 'I'm not touching you anymore until you quit smoking.' I thought it was a joke, and then, after, like, two weeks, there was no physical contact."
He explained that after three weeks of no physical contact, he realized it was time to do something about his bad habit, adding, "I tried to quit, and I couldn't quit."
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After trying and failing to quit on his own, O'Connell sought out an unconventional method to help him kick the addiction.
"I knew a girl who had quit smoking, and I called her up, and I said, 'How did you do it?' And she said, 'I'm going to give you the number of this lady,'" he recalled. "And I went to see her, and I had to bring a photo of my children and my wife, and I sat down on her recliner, and she put her headphones on me and there was like spa music, and she was like, 'I'm going to count to ten. Ten, nine, eight …' And I fell asleep."
When he first woke up, the "Stand by Me" star recalled thinking "that was baloney" and that he couldn't believe "I just gave some old lady $800" for that, calling it "a waste of money."
He explained, however, that when he got back to his car he put a cigarette in his mouth but "couldn't light it."
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O'Connell and Romijn first met in 2004 at the Maxim Hot 100 party and just one year later, the two were engaged. They later tied the knot in July 2008, and have welcomed two children over the course of their marriage: 17-year-old twin daughters, Dolly and Charlie.
Prior to starting a relationship with O'Connell, Romijn was married to "Full House" star John Stamos, who called her the "devil" and said she was "evil" towards the end of their marriage in his memoir, "If You Would Have Told Me."
"My wife’s ex-husband recently wrote a biography, and it referred to my wife in a negative manner and a lot of people have asked me about that in the press," O'Connell said in November 2023. "And it would be easy for me to say like, ‘Screw you, how dare you ask me that,’ but really it would be bringing attention to a situation that I don’t want to feed into."
He added, "There’s children involved. Teenage children who read everything on the internet. So you don’t want to like feed that fire."
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Stamos and O'Connell publicly put their feud to rest when they posted a picture of them with Stamos' wife, Caitlin McHugh, while at Howie Mendel's birthday party in November.
"First @zohrankmamdani and @realdonaldtrump Then me and @johnstamos You are up @russian_kremlin & zelenskyy_official," O'Connell captioned the post.