‘Dell Dude’ Ben Curtis On His Pot Arrest, Being Fired From Dell, PTSD [VIDEO EXCLUSIVE]

It seems like ages ago that a young teenage boy was on television begging his parents to buy him a Dell. For Ben Curtis, the actor who played “The Dell Dude” in one of Dell’s most successful ad campaigns, it feels like forever ago too, but still, the actor remembers that pivotal moment in his life very clearly.

It all began when Curtis was studying acting at New York University and his friend, who studied business, was going on several auditions. Curtis asked his friend for his manager’s contact and soon after, Curtis booked the commercial with Dell.

“It just took off, Dell didn’t even really know how big it was going to be,” Curtis, who currently stars in the off-broadway play The Crusade of Connor Stephens, told uInterview.

The campaign took off, Dell’s stock prices soared, and Curtis quickly became famous as the first-ever spokesperson for the computer giant.

“I was being interviewed every day, I was on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Good Morning America, auditioning for Terminator 3.” But quickly, everything caught up with him.

Curtis moved downtown to New York’s financial district several months before the terror attacks of 9/11. Being so close to the horror gave Curtis an undiagnosed case of PTSD.

“I was really sick, I didn’t even really know it. I was using drugs and alcohol to try to cope, I was a mess,” he said.

The young actor was arrested while buying marijuana from a weed delivery guy by an undercover cop who had been following the delivery guy. Now, more than a decade later, Curtis has a good sense of humor about the situation.

“Getting arrested was also a little traumatic because I knew I had quite a bit of fame and I’d never been arrested before. And I was in a kilt with no underwear – proper Scottish style,” Curtis joked. “If you’re proper Scottish you don’t wear underwear.”

As the story goes, Curtis and his friend were both dating Scottish women and the two couples had just returned from the Edinburgh Festival. For his friend’s birthday, they thought it would be as good a time as any to wear the kilts they had bought. Unfortunately, it happened to be the outfit he was arrested in.

Dell, who has a zero-tolerance policy for drug use, dropped the “Dude” campaign and parted ways with Curtis unceremoniously.

Still, Curtis feels the arrest, and the termination that followed, were worth it, as far as his mental health is concerned.

“The arrest really helped me get better, and make everything stop, so that I could get better.”

“I learned from it and that’s the most important thing. We make mistakes but it’s how we learn from them.”