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Pint-sized Paul Williams - best known as Little Enos in the "Smokey and the Bandit" movies - is making a giant comeback after spending nearly a decade hooked on alcohol and drugs.

"You know you're an alcoholic when you misplace a decade" says 61-year-old Williams, who barely remembers the '80's.

An Oscar, and Grammy winning singer/songwriter, Williams just finished writing a song for the upcoming movie "The Sum Of All Fears", staring Ben Affleck - and will be appearing in the soon-to-be-released "The Rule of Attraction".

The 5-foot-2 tunesmith - who penned such '70s classics as The Carepenters' 'We've Only Just Begun' (click here for the lyrics of this song) and Three Dog Night's, 'An Old Fashioned Love Song' (click here for the lyrics of this song) - started drinking as a teenager. As he grew older, he turned to drugs.

At 46, he left his wife and kids for a 22-year-old college student. "She was the love affair of my life, and I wanted desperately to keep her", Williams says of the pretty psychology major.

"I did what a lot of alcoholics do: I told her I was sober and I continued to use. After she would go to bed, I would sneak out the pet door and score more drugs". Williams was afraid to use the front door because it squeaked and might wake his girlfriend.

"I had an Oscar on the piano and a star on the Hollwood Boulevard, and here I was sneaking out on all fours", WPaul told an interviewer. The relationship did not last...and his life spiraled downhill.

In September 1989, high on cocaine and waving a gun at imaginary enemies, a panicked Williams called his psychiatrist for help. Though he didn't remember making the call - he made it during a blackout - his psychiatrist did and Williams soon entered a 28-day rehab program in Los Angeles. Since then, he's been clean and sober and has turned his life around.

At the suggestion of a good friend, the gifted entertainer enrolled in night classes at UCLA, received his drug and alcohol counselor's certificate and began volunteering at area hospitals.

Putting his nightmare years behind him, got involved again in the lives of his son Cole, 20, and daughter Sarah, 17.

 "I was a total failure as a father",  Williams admits. "I had to hit bottom before I did anything about it".

As he pulled his life together, Paul started to feel passionate about his music, and the last year he was inducted into the "Songwriters Hall of Fame". (See here for more details about Paul's induction)

His most recent album "Back To Love Again", (See here for more details on the album) has new songs and remakes of past hits - and with a song back in his heart, he's happily performing and writing again.

Ellen Goodstein
The National Enquirer