For nine months, Lady Gaga remained in character while filming for Ridley Scott’s murder drama "House of Gucci" but toward the end of production she ended up seeking mental health treatment.
The Oscar winner's method acting resulted in her suffering from anxiety as well as fatigue and also had her revisiting past traumas as she embodied the role of Patrizia Reggiani in the film. Gaga sat down with Variety to speak about the experience and how she was aided by an on-set psychiatric nurse.
"I had a psychiatric nurse with me towards the end of filming," she said. "I sort of felt like I had to. I felt that it was safer for me."
Gaga recalled how she did not break character once during filming.
"I was always Patrizia. I always spoke in my accent. And even if I was speaking about things that weren’t related to the movie — I wasn’t pretending that Maurizio was waiting for me downstairs — I was still living my life. I just lived it as her," she said. "I brought the darkness with me home because her life was dark."
In November, Gaga told The Hollywood Reporter that she connected Reggiani’s trauma to her own personal traumas through sense memory techniques. That included revisiting being raped when she was 19 years old by a music producer. At one point, Scott had to intervene when he thought the technique was unhealthy.
"It’s a scene where I knock a lit candle across the room, and I remember I gave Salma [Hayek] a heart attack that day," she said of the moment. "I was falling apart as [Patrizia] fell apart. When I say that I didn’t break character, some of it was not by choice."
Speaking with Variety, Gaga said she was not sharing this information to "glorify" her commitment to acting.
"I don’t think that any actor should push themselves to that limit," she said. "And I ask myself all the time why I do that. I’ve done some pretty extreme art pieces throughout my career — the things I’ve put my body through, my mind.
"It’s like a walnut of sadness in my stomach as I say this to you. I don’t know why I’m like that. I think that the best answer I could give you is I have a sort of romantic relationship with suffering for your art that I developed as a young girl, and it just sometimes goes too far. And when it does go too far, it can be hard to reel it in on your own."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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