Penn Badgley is opening up about his early struggles with physique picture, lengthy earlier than “Gossip Girl” and “You” made him a family identify.
In an interview with The Guardian to advertise the ultimate season of “You,” the actor mentioned he skilled physique dysmorphia throughout his adolescent years, however acknowledged he by no means acquired a proper prognosis.
“I know that I hated my body and simply wanted a different one,” Badgley advised the outlet.
In accordance to Johns Hopkins Drugs, physique dysmorphia or physique dysmorphic dysfunction is a psychological well being situation the place an individual has an obsessive deal with perceived flaws of their look. It may well result in stress, anxiousness and even suicidal ideations.
Badgley pointed to his mother and father’ divorce as taking a destructive toll on his vanity, after which he started overeating in response. When he started appearing at age 12, making his first on-screen look with a small position on “Will & Grace,” he mentioned his pressures solely elevated.
“There was just a period where, coming out of depression and isolation, I was jumping willfully into, but also being thrust into, this world where the more conventionally beautiful I seemed, the more successful I might be, the more value I might have,” he mentioned. “There’s no way to get past the superficiality of this work, and if you recognize that, you can’t help but recognize the superficiality of our culture, because of the way it rewards this work.”
Lately, Badgley is fortunately a married father of two, although his household is about to develop later this yr. In February, his spouse Domino Kirke revealed on Instagram that the couple predict a set of twins.
He’s additionally discovered to deal with the continued scrutiny over his look in Hollywood by means of spirituality, noting he prays and meditates day by day.
“That is what allowed me to persevere through the disillusionment, all the things I’d been grappling with, and then come back to it all, but with hopefully some kind of inner transformation,” he mentioned.
Season 5 of “You,” which hits Netflix final week, will see Badgley portraying the murderous antihero Joe Goldberg for the final time. Although the actor is tight-lipped on specifics, he mentioned he believes the sequence “reached truly the best resolution for him.”
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