Jamie Foxx had panic attack for two week because theRaydirector made him paste his eye shut . To make matters worse , his colleagues kept forget he was ineffective to see and accidentally leaving him on his own .
On the surface, acting seems like an easy, glamorous job. While it may not be as physically demanding as other professions, many actors have spoken about the harm certain roles have done to their mental health. Stepping into else’s shoes for weeks or even years can leave a lasting impact on your mind.
Here are 18 actors who’ve talked about the mental toll of pretending to be somebody else for a living:
1.After starring as Danny Sullivan in the psychological thrillerThe Crowded Room,Tom Hollanddecided to take a year off from acting as “a result of how difficult this show was.”
He toldExtra , " I ’m no stranger to hard work . I ’ve always sort of lived by this idea that hard piece of work is good work . I really enjoyed it , but then again , the show did break me . There did come a prison term where I was sort of like , ' I call for to have a intermission . ' I disappeared . I went to Mexico for a week and had some fourth dimension on a beach . "
antecedently , he toldEntertainment Weekly , " I ’m no alien to the forcible look of the business doing the whole activity picture show thing . But the mental aspect , it really tucker out me up and it occupy a longsighted meter for me to reclaim afterwards , to sort of get back to reality … I was seeing myself in [ Danny ] , but in my personal life . I remember have a turn of a nuclear meltdown at house and mentation , like , ' I ’m going to shave my head . I need to trim my head because I need to get disembarrass of this character . ' And , obviously , we were mid - shooting , so I decided not to … It was unlike anything I ’ve ever experienced before . "
2.Zendayawas “always a bit scared” to film certain episodes ofEuphoriaSeason 2. She “didn’t want to see Rue like that, or have to go through that” because “your body is a person, it doesn’t know that what you’re doing is not real.”
She toldElle Australia , " My brain can say , ' Ok I ’m pretending ' but when I ’m doing it , my body and my essence do n’t fuck that it ’s not real . It can be exhausting in that fashion , and it can make you feel bad because she says and does thing that I do n’t want her to do and say , but here I am . "
3.While preparing to play Killmonger inBlack Panther, Michael B. Jordan “spent a lot of time alone.” He continued to isolate himself during filming and “didn’t have an escape plan.” After wrapping, “being in that kind of mind state…it caught up with [him],” and he sought therapy.
4.A few years into filmingStranger Things,Finn Wolfhardbegan having panic attacks, but he “did not talk about anything, because [he] just was having this crazy whirlwind career, so there was no time, or at least [he] didn’t feel [there was] at the time.”
He toldGQ , " Everyone was like , ' take care at him , he ’s okay . He ’s having the effective time . ' But in reality , I was probably also develop and things were happen in my brainiac and anxiety were forming and things that I did n’t clear that I had to bury because of how I had to experience at work . "
5.ForHouse of Gucci, Lady Gaga took a method-acting approach, and she “brought the darkness with [her] home because [Patrizia Gucci’s] life was dark.” Towards the end of filming, she began bringing a psychiatric nurse to set with her because she “felt that it was safer for [her].”
She toldVariety , " I do n’t think that any role player should crowd themselves to that terminal point . And I ask myself all the time why I do that . I ’ve done some reasonably uttermost artistic production piece throughout my calling — the things I ’ve put my body through , my mind . It ’s like a walnut tree of sadness in my abdomen as I say this to you . I do n’t cognise why I ’m like that . I think that the best result I could give you is I have a sort of quixotic relationship with suffering for your artwork that I developed as a untested girl , and it just sometimes goes too far . And when it does go too far , it can be heavy to reel it in on your own … It ’s o.k. to ask for aid . If you ’re feeling like that , expect for help . No matter what . "
6.Playing Howard Hughes, who experienced OCD, inThe Aviatorexacerbated Leonardo DiCaprio’s own symptoms of OCD.
He told theTelegraph , " I can talk myself through it , you make love , whereas Howard Hughes could n’t do that … During cinematography , I let it all go and I never hear to the other vocalization … I rent myself do it because I wanted that to come out . I was essay to be the fibre . It became real annoying , even after the filming . "
7.FilmingThe Shiningwas “very hard” on Shelley Duvall, and she “got to the point where [she] just couldn’t take anymore, [she] needed a break, but taking a break costs money and people need the shot done, so [she] had a little breakdown.”
She toldFangoriamagazine , " I reckon it was only 10 instant , but I just needed to get my head together , we were shooting long days , sometimes 15–16 hours , and it really does take a lot out of you . It was one of the most toilsome experiences on a solidifying I ’ve had , but the conclusion result was deserving it . Do n’t get me wrong , Stanley [ Kubrick ] was a very kind and ardent valet , he has a visual sensation in his head on what he want to see through his tv camera and if you do n’t quite understand where he is coming from he get disappointed and angry , communicating and understanding plays a boastful part of movie sets , I just was n’t getting it , I did in the end . "
8.While playing Grace Fraser inThe Undoing, Nicole Kidman “went down for a week because your immune system doesn’t know the difference between acting and truth when you’re doing this.”
On theWTF With Marc Maronpodcast , she said , " Suddenly I was in this place where there was sort of a disquietness to my personality , where I was uneasy and there was duress on who I was … I actually got really nauseous , and I call back this is a heavy thing that pass to thespian . "
9.After wrappingThe Reader, in which she played a Nazi guard, Kate Winslet was “still absolutely haunted and traumatized by so much of what [she] saw during the preparation process,” and she “sort of walked away like some car crash victim who somehow hadn’t been hurt on the outside.”
She toldHuffPost , " I am still coming to term with the whole experience of having play Hannah , I really genuinely am … It was truly overwhelming . I really went somewhere . I was in some kind of a trance . And I ’m still coming to term with all of it . "
10.For the role of Ray Charles in the biopicRay, Jamie Foxx had to glue his eyelids shut at the request of director Taylor Hackford. He experienced panic attacks during the first two weeks on set, and his colleagues kept forgetting he was unable to see and accidentally leaving him on his own.
He told theNew York Times , " Imagine having your eyes glued shut for 14 hour a sidereal day . That ’s your jail prison term . "
11.While playing Tonya Harding inI, Tonya, Margot Robbie “found it emotionally traumatic to put [herself] in the mindset of someone who’s in an abusive relationship.”
She severalize theHollywood Reporter , " It was a lineament that definitely scared me . And I could n’t empathise why she was doing and saying the thing she was doing and saying , but I need to — and any time that occur in a script , that ’s a type I really want to play . "
12.After filming Marion Crane’s famous shower death scene inPsycho, Janet Leigh “stopped taking showers and [she could] only take baths.”
She toldWoman ’s World , " And when I ’m someplace where I can only take a bath , I make certain the doors and windows of the house are locked . I also allow for the privy door unresolved and shower curtain open . I ’m always facing the door , watching , no matter where the exhibitioner head is . "
13.To Bill Skarsgård, playing Pennywise inItfelt “like being in a very destructive relationship.” After filming was over, he “started having very strange and vivid Pennywise dream.”
He toldEntertainment Weekly , " After we twine , I was in my puerility home in Sweden , sit sustain coffee bean with my mom at our kitchen tabular array , and realized , ' Oh , holy shit , I do n’t have to dispense with this relationship any longer ! ' It was a very fast switching of just feelingbetter , like , ' Oh my God , I ’m relieved that I do n’t have to lot with the darkness of the lineament . ' I liken it to an dispossession – him exiting my body and experience rid of the Pennywise toxins . "
14.After playing William O’Neal inJudas and The Black Messiah, LaKeith Stanfield “realized going forward, before [he steps] into something like that again, maybe [he wants to] have a therapist.”
He toldLevel , " In the shot where I had to poison [ Fred Hampton ] , a plenty of it did n’t terminate up take it to the final cut , but we shot [ me mixing it in ] Kool - Aid , and I had to go through all those movement . With somebody like Daniel [ Kaluuya ] , who I just respect as a man and an creative person , as Fred Hampton , it feel like I was really poisoning Chairman Fred Hampton . One thing Dominique Fishback cite to me is that your consistency does n’t always differentiate the experience from your imagination . So sometimes your body cerebrate that ’s real , everything you ’re putting it through . It ’s no wonder I ’ve been feeling so stressed out and having panic attacks . "
15.Undergoing an extreme physical transformation for a role can also contribute to adverse mental health effects. After losing a significant amount of weight forJoker, Joaquin Phoenix said that “you really develop like a disorder.”
He toldAP , " Once you attain the target weight , everything changes . Like so much of what ’s hard is waking up every day and being obsessed over like 0.3 pounds . "
16.To play Fantine inLes Misérables, Anne Hathaway underwent significant weight loss. She “was in such a state of deprivation — physical and emotional.”
She toldVogue , " When I get home , I could n’t react to the chaos of the world without being overwhelmed … It took me weeks till I felt like myself again . "
17.Theviralityof his physical transformation forEternalsmadeKumail Nanjianifeel “powerful” at first, but “pretty quickly after that, it felt reductive, it felt naked, it felt vulnerable.” The film also “brought a lot of those issues [he had around food] up to the surface.”
He toldNPR , " I realized after that that I thought about nutrient in a specific kind of elbow room that I needed to search and revisit . … Preparing to play Steve inChippendalesactually did a muckle of that oeuvre for me . I pull in that I had been so rigid with food and used it in so many unhealthy ways and then coerce myself to eat insalubrious amounts of unhealthful food in a way of life pose me out of that trap . It ’s still work to do , but it was free for month to just exhaust whatever I wanted , to deplete as much as I want . It sort of freed me from some of the manner that I ’ve been thinking about nutrient . "
18.And finally, while preparing to play Adam Warlock inGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Will Poulter “really appreciated that [Marvel] prioritized [his] mental health throughout the process.”
He toldThe Cut , " I was concerned about how it might touch me when I was really athirst or stock or stressed . "
antecedently , he told theIndependent , " The most important thing is that your mental and forcible wellness has to be number one , and the aesthetic goals have to be secondary , otherwise you cease up promoting something that is unhealthy and unrealistic if you do n’t have the financial financial support of a studio paying for your meals and training . I ’m in a very privileged posture in that respect , and I would n’t commend anyone do what I did to get quick for that problem . "
TheNational Alliance on Mental Illnesshelpline is 1 - 888 - 950 - 6264 ( NAMI ) and put up information and referral services;GoodTherapy.orgis an association of mental health master from more than 25 countries who support efforts to cut down hurt in therapy .
