Sophie Turner, famous interpreter of Sansa Stark in the series “Game of Thrones” has spoken publicly in recent weeks about her depression, her weight gain and the pressure suffered by many studios at the start of her career.
It’s not easy growing up in the spotlight. From Drew Barrymore to Lindsay Lohan via Britney Spears, Zac Efron, Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber… many child stars have fallen in love at one time or another. And Sophie Turner, interpreter of Sansa Stark in the hit series Game Of Thrones (GOT for the fans), did not escape these sad statistics.
If the young actress did not sink into narcotics and never caused a public scandal, her early fame (the series began when she was 15) seriously affected her mentally, disrupting her metabolism in the process. “I suffered from mental illness. My metabolism suddenly decided to drop to the depths of the ocean and I started to get uneven and put on weight, and all of that was happening to me on camera,” said thus confided the 23-year-old actress in an interview with Marie-Claire Australia as the eighth and final season of GOT is currently airing.
Thus, in addition to her depression, Sophie Turner had to face the Hollywood dictates of extreme thinness: “So then came the pressure from film and television studios to lose weight”. The actress therefore decided to undergo therapy. “Everyone needs a therapist, especially when you’re constantly being told that you’re not good enough and you don’t seem good enough. I think it’s necessary to have someone to talk to to help us get through this”, explains the young woman now adored around the world for her dream plastic.
But this is not the first time that Sophie Turner confides on the subject. “I was consumed by thoughts about weight and the idea that you have to be thin to be an actress, and that I was not thin enough to have a job (…) There are times where I had jobs and they told me that I had to lose weight, even if it had nothing to do with the character. It’s so disgusting”, she had thus told to Porter Magazine in August 2017.
“I cried, I cried and cried again”
Before going into more detail about his depression in the podcast Phil in the Blanks, hosted by American host Dr Phil, a few weeks ago: “I had no motivation to do anything or go out. Even my best friends, I didn’t want to see them…I was crying and crying and crying Just having to change and put clothes on, I was like, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t go outside. There’s nothing I don’t want to do,” testified Sophie Turner before discussing suicide: “It’s weird. I say I wasn’t depressed when I was younger but I thought a lot to suicide. I don’t know why though. Maybe it was just a weird fascination (…). I don’t think I could have gone all the way.”
And if her inner struggle is far from over, the young woman says she is now getting better thanks to the support of singer Joe Jonas, whom she married this week in Las Vegas. “Today, I love myself, or in any case, more than before. Today I am with someone who makes me understand that I have qualities. And when someone tells you that he love you every day, it helps you to love yourself a little more“, she concluded, on a note of hope.
A speech that greatly moved the lover in question. “It’s huge. I think the best thing about it is that she can now encourage other young people who are going through similar experiences and be a voice they can listen to…I’m proud of her “, reacted Joe Jonas a few days later in the columns of the magazine Extra.
Depression and eating disorders often go together
Sophie Turner therefore joins the long list of celebrities who have had to fight depression and speak openly. Recently it is Britney Spears who made this subject talk. In “emotional distress” because of family problems, the singer went to a psychiatric hospital in early April to take time for herself. On Instagram, she then posted a video claiming to have, unlike Sophie Turner when she was very badly, lost a lot of weight due to stress and anxiety.
Because depression and weight problems often go hand in hand. Indeed, eating disorders are one of the nine symptoms of the disease. Some lose their taste for food, making meal preparation a chore and eating a superhuman effort, while others instead have irrepressible cravings that sometimes manifest as bulimia. Not to mention that many antidepressants are known to cause weight gain, which does not help the patient’s mental condition.
In the same logic, several works have already made the link between obesity and depression. End of 2018, a large study conducted by researchers from the University of South Australia and the University of Exeter (United Kingdom) had in particular confirmed previous research by proving that obese people (when the body mass index exceeds 30kg/m2) were more likely to suffer from depression, especially women. In the latter, for each increase in BMI of 4.7 points, the risk of depression would thus increase by 18% to 23%.
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