I assume that everyone has already heard that actors are "mentally ill". Most of the people blame the fame for the depression that actors struggle with. "All famous people meet depression one day".This can be true in many situations but there's something that actors have which brings them closer to depression and celebrities from other industries don't. Keep reading to meet the reasons why actors are more prone to depression.
"Performers are twice as likely as the general
population to experience depression, according to 2015
Australian Actors' Wellbeing Study. Many suffer from performance anxiety
and report high levels of stress arising from work-related pressures such as
low income and job insecurity."6 Dec 2017
I assume that everyone has already heard that actors are "mentally ill". Most of the people blame the fame for this. "All famous people are depressed". There's something that actors have and it brings them closer to depression and celebrities from other industries don't.
We see our favourite actors and they always make us smile or
giggle. They make us laugh, they make us cry, and when they are in their best
shape, they can make us think.
We fall in love with characters from movies
or plays and the performer becomes "our favourite actor". What we do
not see it's the person behind the character, we only know and love their role.
We don't know how they are like, how their personal life is, or what their
connection with people behind the scenes is.
What if their real personality looks
nothing like the character's one? People fell in love with the movie they've
seen with them and have expectations from the actor to be the same as the
character.
1
It is very common to imagine them being
much like the characters they portray, the truth is that for a lot of them,
it's not that way.
Actors are human beings too and they
"act" like themselves in real life, not like the character. It
happens that the fans get to this realization and start to research about the
real attitude or personality of the actor they might not be that happy about
it. Here comes the disappointment. This sometimes leads the fans to throw hate
to the performer. These days it happens mostly on social media, which if is
taken personally, the performer might get to depression.
When you are an
actor, in the world where you live you are judged by the way you look like,
what you sound like or how believable you are in a given role. I believe that
living a life where everyone gets to judge you it's not easy. Getting comments
about you every day is hard. As humans, we are meant to have bad days and good
days, bad periods and good periods. If the actor is weak at the moment he gets
all those negative comments and opinions about him, he might get to depression
based to the fact that "nobody likes him" or "nobody appreciates
his work". It is normal and most of the people go through it.
2
Imagine the type of acting you do is
related to comedy. Instantly, everyone is conditioned to think you are funny.
Funny is very often associated with "Happy". Those are 2 different
characteristics. Funny people aren't necessarily happy. The best example, in
this case, is the famous actor and comedian Robin Williams.
According to source 1 (read below) Robin
Williams was suffering from relationship problems, financial problems, drug
addiction, and major depression. All of these factors led to his suicide. We'd
think that the man who was always making us laugh would be the happiest person
in the world. It is not true. He wasn't. I believe that this is one of the
situations that perfectly defines the word "actor". Actors are
supposed to act, not to be themselves. Many of them, particularly those
involved in comedic roles, wear a mask that hides their inner sadness.
3
It happens quite often in the industry that
actors indulge themselves so much in the character they are playing that it
becomes difficult to get out of it, and that affects them in real life. Getting
into character is not just as simple as “putting on” or “taking off” a role.
Playing a character is a complex process that sometimes cannot be separated
from the life of the actor. The character becomes a part of you, you are the
character. Sometimes actors are unable to let go of the emotions associated with
their characters. It can result in them carrying the role into their everyday
life which has a variety of negative effects over the performer's life. It
might get very dangerous if you're playing a totally unsocial character, like a
psychopath.
Heath Ledger (for the
Joker) is a big example. It is believed by very many people that the sudden
death of this actor was because of his obsession with the character JOKER. He
threw himself into the character so much that the Joker's personality had become
a part of him. For preparing to play the role Joker he had isolated himself
from everybody in a hotel room and devoted all his time to bring about all
those negative and dark traits he needed to play his character. He even
maintained a diary during that time which contained some chilling magazine and
newspaper cuttings and photos. In fact, he had scribbled "Bye-Bye" at
the end of his journal. He said in an interview in 2007. Maybe Ledger delved so
deep into the character that it drove him to take shelter in his darker side
and it became tough for him to come back from there.
4
The high levels of anxiety and stress-specific
to the acting community is triggered by many contributing factors; such as the
deep emotions actors are often required to access and express when playing a
role. This can be traumatic if it triggers deep issues or elicits
difficult experiences and memories.
Performers might need to tap into their worst
personal memories every day for their shows. Bringing those memories back to
their everyday life is used to evoke the emotions in a role. There are also
other techniques that some actors prefer to use to avoid the pain of bringing
trauma back to their thoughts. One of them is to imagine instead of
remembering.
5
Also, actors can form strong
identification with their characters. Playing a character for around 6 months
especially in the film industry may get tough. If they find themselves in their
role they get attached to it, it becomes part of them. When the production finishes
they can become depressed. It's like losing a friend, a really close friend.
French actress Marion Cotillard revealed
on The Graham Norton Show in 2016, playing such an intense character (Edith
Piaf) proved difficult to shake after cameras stopped rolling.
"That was the first time I had trouble getting rid
of a character," she
said, "which I was very ashamed of ...
because I thought, 'It's a job; I'm an actress; I shouldn't be affected by any
of my roles.' But I had spent more than six months with her and I really
entered another dimension. I didn't see my friends and family for that amount
of time, because when I would see them, they would find me weird, and I didn't
like it."
Michael B. Jordan thought that by finishing a movie, getting back to normal
life, and cutting his hair would allow him to step out of the darkness that
playing Killmonger required. But it wasn't that simple. The outcast Wakandan
was full of pain and anger and to play that, Michael B. Jordan had to feel- and
those aren't emotions you can just turn off with the flip of a switch.
"It was one of those things that I didn't know what was
going on. I never was in a character for that long of a period of time and was,
I guess, that dark, that lonely, that painful. So coming out of it, I thought,
'Oh yeah, business as usual. I can just go back home, I'll cut my hair off, and
everything will be back to normal.' I found myself kind of in the routine of
being isolated and went out of my way to make sure I was by myself and didn't
say too much more than the usual. Once I got finished wrapping the movie, it
took me some time to talk through how I was feeling and why I was feeling so
sad and like a little bit depressed."
That said, some people can get
lost in their created characters and find it difficult to get out of the
created world.
Worldwide, over 350 million people of all
ages suffer from depression. What we all need to know, actors or not is that we
are not alone.
“I found that
with depression one of the most important things you could realize is that you’re
not alone” said Dwayne Johnson
Sources:
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