Crews grew up in a strict religious family in Flint, Michigan, with an abusive father. As Crews put it, “My father was addicted to alcohol, and my mother was addicted to religion.” To protect his mom, he began bulking up, until one day he beat his father for hitting his mom, but recalling the incident, the star said, “I didn’t feel one bit better. It left me with nothing.”

Crews played in the NFL for five years before he retired in 1996, and he has been vocal about his experience ever since. During a Sports Illustrated interview, Crews exposed the league’s insular thinking, saying, “It’s really like a cult […] The NFL is a cult … you believe in it and you’re like ‘They wouldn’t do anything to hurt me' […] And uh, oh, maybe they would.”

When Crews first showed up in Hollywood, he got a rude awakening, recalling, “I moved to Los Angeles thinking that because I was a football player, I was going to get a lot of big opportunities. They didn't even have a football team then, nobody cared!” Crews ultimately swallowed his pride and got a job sweeping factories to support himself.

Like many pro athletes, Crews struggled with his post-retirement transition. Despite his early success in entertainment, Crews turned to fast food for comfort and gained 30 pounds. He would often get depressed as soon as a project was done, remembering, “I had determined my worth through the opinions of other people […] If I wasn’t working ... I was a failure.”

Crews has been very open about his porn addiction, revealing that he has been “addicted to pornography since [he] was 12 years old.” Crews shared how it impacted his life, saying, “It changes the way you think about people. People become objects.” Ultimately, it got so bad it threatened his marriage, but Crews kicked the habit after going to rehab.