These 6 actors went to therapy after playing controversial character

Hallucinations, exhaustion, stress, insomnia. On a couple of occasion, after long days of filming and loads of physical and mental demands, actors experience these after-effects on their health when playing certain characters. Although many imagine otherwise, it’s not a simple job. Because of this, many actors resolve to hunt therapy for help. Below, you possibly can learn slightly more in regards to the subject.

6 actors who went to therapy after their performances

It’s clear that the aim of acting is to represent a personality and assume its qualities to convey its essence. To attain this, actors prepare and study in depth the role they need to embody. This, which is usually successfully achieved within the movie or series, has certain consequences in real life. Why?

Because there are creepy characters, with dark and unscrupulous personalities. In other cases, the actors resolve to vary their life habits (starve, isolate themselves, etc.), with a purpose to understand how that character feels and lives. Also because becoming another person, for a very long time, can lead the actor to forget who she or he is. Acting could be exciting, but behind the lights and backstage, it also has its own difficulties.

Listed below are some actors who went to therapy after playing certain characters.

1. Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight

In any of its versions, the interpretation of the famous Joker could be controversial for actors. For a lot of, Ledger’s performance was the perfect of all time.

His success didn’t cost him little: he isolated himself for a time and experienced difficulty sleeping. In an interview, the actor commented that he locked himself in a hotel for a month, rehearsing different voices for the villain. For this very reason, after his performance, he decided to go to therapy.

2. Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables

After playing Fantine within the musical, Hathaway said that she ended up with physical (weight reduction) and mental (stress and fatigue) difficulties. Although her role earned her recognition on the Oscar awards, the actress expressed in numerous interviews that she couldn’t feel glad in regards to the state she was in.

3. Adrien Brody in The Pianist

His role on this film, as a Jewish pianist who hides to survive after the Nazi invasion, earned him the outstanding Oscar award for Best Actor. Nonetheless, the artist confessed that he was 27 years old and underwent several changes that catapulted him, suddenly, to maturity.

He experienced some hardship and suffering to know his character, who lived in a fragile context. Brody went on an extreme weight loss program to drop extra pounds and likewise lived in isolation to higher characterize his role. This resulted in depression that led him to hunt therapy.

4. Jane Fonda in Grace and Frankie

That is a unique case from the others, since here it doesn’t involve the interpretation of a sinister character, but a private situation. For the actress, the return to the screen after several years away from the occupation implied a challenge that caused anxiety.

Sometimes, the interior pressures, the demands, and the need to perform well work as stress aspects, generating some discomfort.

5. Bob Hoskins in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The British actor played detective Eddie Valiant, but needed to keep away from acting for some time and go to therapy because he began to have hallucinations. During filming, he needed to interact with cartoons, which meant that for a very long time he felt that he saw these characters in every single place. He even expressed that they appeared to him when talking to other people.

6. Bill Skarsgard in It

Who hasn’t felt fear after seeing the scary Pennywise come out of the sewers? Well, even the actor who played him has suffered from nightmares!

In Skarsgard’s case, he mentioned that after filming was over, he had very real nightmares. Alternatively, he also expressed that throughout the filming he felt very lonely, since throughout the breaks, nobody would approach him to check with him because he looked so scary.

Although he didn’t go into depth on whether he went to therapy or not after his performance, what he did mention was that, throughout the preparation of his role, he studied and inquired quite a bit in regards to the psychology of the character, trying to know his dark thoughts. This, at times, made him feel that the clown lived inside himself.

No job within the limelight is ideal

After knowing some cases of actors who went to therapy after impersonating certain roles, it might be observed that any job, under conditions of stress and pressure, has severe repercussions on people‘s physical and mentalhealth.

The work and skilled environment determines the identity of those that work, since by “doing”, in addition they “are”; that’s to say, they configure their very own style and put loads of themselves into it. Sometimes, the work life finally ends up blurring the intimate life and this finally ends up being affected.

On the whole, many individuals consider acting imagining luxury, comfort, limousines, private parties and all of the glitz they share from the mainstream; nevertheless, perhaps that’s the visible a part of the iceberg. But there are also long days of filming, stunts, amongst other things.

The burnout is one in every of the implications of being subjected to stress and fatigue. Its results, besides physical (headaches, tinnitus, extreme tiredness, etc.), are also psychological (lack of enjoyment, sleeping difficulties, anxiety, panic attacks, moodiness and irritability, not feeling oneself, amongst others).

On this sense, it’s necessary to give you the chance to seek out a balance and ensure the perfect conditions to satisfy our obligations: rest, dedicating micro-moments of leisure throughout the working day, good nutrition or exercise.

Finally, what could be rescued from this example is the visibility of mental health by public figures. In this fashion, it’s easier to naturalize that any person, even those that are thought to have their life solved, may need assistance and it’s crucial to ask for it in time.

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