12 Actors Whose Roles Have Really Impacted Their Mental Health
“I don’t think you can go through something like that and not have PTSD afterwards.”
Some actors take a character’s impersonation to the next level, and that’s not always a good thing in the long run. While fully immersing yourself in a character is key to making a great film, it can have a negative impact on an actor’s mental health, especially in an intense role. Even after filming is complete, it can be a challenge for these stars to return to normal life and completely shake off the characters they portray.
Find out what these actors had to say about how their roles impacted their mental health…
Tom Holland decided to take a year off from acting after starring in the psychological thriller The Crowded Room. because it really affected his sanity. While sharing that he was used to the “physical aspects” of the acting profession, he said dealing with the mental side of things was a new experience.
“The mental aspect really blew me away and it took me a long time to recover afterwards to sort of get back to reality… I saw myself in it.” [Danny], but in my private life. I remember having kind of a nervous breakdown at home and thinking, “I’m going to shave my head.” “I need to shave my head because I have to get rid of this character.” And of course we were in the middle of filming, so I decided not to do it… It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before,” he said Weekly entertainment.
Lady Gaga fell so in love with the role while filming House of Gucci that she ended up needing a psychiatric nurse because she “felt it was safer for her.” Gaga says that when she wasn’t filming, she still lived as Patrizia Gucci, bringing “the darkness” home with her “because her life was dark.”
“I don’t think an actor should push that line. And I keep asking myself why I’m doing this. I’ve created some pretty extreme art throughout my career – the things I’ve put on my body.” “By my mind. It’s like a walnut of sadness in my stomach as I tell you this. I don’t know why I’m like this,” she said diversity. “I think the best answer I can give you is that I have a kind of romantic relationship with suffering for your art that I developed as a young girl that sometimes just goes too far. And if it goes too far, it can happen.” It’s going to be difficult to handle on your own… It’s okay to ask for help. If you feel this way, ask for help. No matter what happens.”
While filming the second season of Euphoria, Zendaya admitted that she struggled with some things she had to do when portraying her character Rue. She says she “didn’t want to see Rue like that or have to go through that,” nor did she want her body to have to go through that.
“Your body is a person, it doesn’t know that what you’re doing isn’t real. My brain can say, ‘okay, I’m pretending,’ but when I do it, my body and my heart don’t know it’s not real. In that way it can be exhausting and it can make you feel guilty because she says and does things that I don’t want her to do and say, but here I am,” she said Elle Australia.
Michael B. Jordan’s intense preparations for his role in Black Panther definitely took a toll on his sanity. Before filming, he isolated himself from friends and family to experience the same loneliness as his character – but once filming wrapped, he found it hard to shake it.
“I didn’t have an escape plan. It was a bit difficult for me at first… Getting used to the people who care about me, getting the love I’ve shut out. I shut out love, I didn’t want love. I wanted.” “I’m going to stay in this lonely place for as long as I can… I went to therapy, I started talking to people, started unpacking a little,” Michael told Oprah during a SuperSoul Conversations special.
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Anne Hathaway’s role as Fantine in Les Misérables was both mentally and physically difficult for her. To portray the dying sex worker, Anne lost 25 pounds through a strict regimen and fast-starvation diet. Additionally, many of the scenes she shot were emotionally draining, including traumatic moments when her hair was shaved, her teeth were pulled out, and she was attacked by a sailor.
“I had to be obsessed with it – the idea was being close to death. Looking back on the whole experience – and I’m in no way judging it – it was definitely a little crazy… I was in such a situation.” “A state of deprivation – physically and emotionally. When I got home I couldn’t react to the chaos of the world without being overwhelmed. It took me weeks to feel like myself again,” Anne shared Fashion.
Alex Wolff says he experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder while filming the supernatural psychological horror film Hereditary. After all the “disturbing things” he saw on set, he couldn’t sleep at night, which he tried to overcome by channeling all of his negative thoughts at once.
“When I started talking about it, all these flashes came back in a kind of flood with all the disturbing things I’ve been going through. It kept me up at night until I got used to emotional masochism, to the point where I started talking about it. I just try to absorb every negative feeling I could draw from. I forced it on myself instead of doing the opposite of what one would normally do in life, which is sit on the radiator until it catches fire and jump up immediately. I had to do the complete opposite of that and absorb the pain and let it burn. It’s a reverse emotional thing. It’s hard to describe eloquently, it’s just a feeling. I don’t think you can go through something like that without getting something out of it. “I got kind of post-traumatic stress disorder afterward,” Alex said in an interview with Vice.
While Bill Skarsgård portrayed Pennywise in It, it felt like he was in a “very destructive relationship” with the evil character. Even after filming was completed, he found it difficult to shake Pennywise and began having “very strange and vivid” dreams about him. Eventually he realized that he didn’t have to be bad anymore and he could let it go.
“After we were done, I was at my parents’ house in Sweden, sitting at our kitchen table with my mom drinking coffee and I was like, ‘Oh holy crap, I don’t have to deal with this relationship anymore!’ It was a very quick change that just made me feel better, like, “Oh my god, I’m relieved I don’t have to deal with the darkness of the character.” I likened it to an exorcism — he left my body and dumped the Pennywise poisons,” he said Weekly entertainment.
When Jamie Foxx played Ray Charles in the biopic about his life, director Taylor Hackford requested that Jamie’s eyelids be taped shut to give the role authenticity. It ended up triggering panic attacks in him – which only got worse when his colleagues often left him alone, forgetting that he couldn’t see.
“Imagine you taped your eyes shut 14 hours a day. This is your prison sentence,” he said New York Times.
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Shortly after portraying a former Nazi warehouse worker in The Reader, Kate Winslet admitted that the role was mentally draining for her. Even after filming wrapped, Kate said she suffered internally and was “still absolutely haunted and traumatized by so much of what happened.” [she] seen during the preparation process.”
“I’m still coming to terms with the whole experience of playing as Hannah, I really really couldn’t speak [about it]. It was really overwhelming. I really went somewhere. I was in a kind of trance. And I’m still dealing with all of this,” she shared HuffPost.
According to LaKeith Stanfield, while filming Judas and the Black Messiah, his brain had a hard time distinguishing between reality and drama. In particular, he struggled with the scene where his character poisoned Daniel Kaluuya, who played Fred Hampton.
“In the scene where I had to poison him, a lot of it didn’t make it into the final cut, but we shot.” [me mixing it in] Kool-Aid, and I had to go through all these emotions. With someone like Daniel, who I just respect as a person and an artist, like Fred Hampton, it felt like I was actually poisoning Chairman Fred Hampton. Sometimes your body thinks everything you do to it is real. No wonder I feel so stressed and have panic attacks. I realized maybe I should see a therapist before I do anything like this again,” Lakeith said in an interview with Complex.
After Christina Applegate wrapped her series “Dead to Me,” she realized that while she was filming, she had worked through a personal loss from the past and needed to seek therapy. Luckily, the experience ended up being beneficial to her, as she was forced to face some of her issues head-on.
“It touched on some things that I had to face. It was cathartic. I do not know if.” [it was] therapeutic. Did I start therapy after filming the show? Yes absolutely. Do you finally want to talk about the things that have hurt you in your life – and recover from them? “I think it’s a really beautiful thing,” Christina said diversity.
Leonardo DiCaprio was already struggling with OCD before he was hired on The Aviator to play real-life businessman Howard Hughes, who also had OCD. Looking back, Leo says he found it difficult to act out OCD symptoms in the film, largely because he wasn’t able to use his typical coping mechanisms.
“I can talk myself through it, you know, while Howard Hughes couldn’t … During filming I let everything go and never listened to the other voice … I let myself be allowed to come out because I wanted to.” I tried to be the character. It got really annoying, even after filming,” he shared telegraph.
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