Sophie Turner’s Mental Health Journey, Eating Disorder Battle in Her Own Words

usmagazine.com:

Even Sansa Stark has struggles. Sophie Turner has been candid about her mental health journey, revealing that she battled an eating disorder during her time on Game of Thrones.“I have experienced mental illness firsthand, and I’ve seen what it can do to the people around [the sufferers] as well,” the actress told Marie Claire Australia in 2019. “[When I was a teenager] my metabolism suddenly decided to fall to the depths of the ocean and I started to get spotty and gain weight, and all of this was happening to me on camera.”Around the same time as her cover story, Turner revealed on the “Phil in the Blanks” podcast that social media users were quick to criticize her appearance.“People used to say, ‘Damn, Sansa gained 10 lbs’ or ‘Damn, Sansa needs to lose 10 lbs’ or ‘Sansa got fat.’ It was just a lot of weight comments, or I would have spotty skin because I was a teenager and that’s normal, and I used to get a lot of comments about my skin and my weight and how I wasn’t a good actress,” she explained to Dr. Phil McGraw. “I would just believe it.

I would say, ‘Yeah, I am spotty. I am fat. I am a bad actress.’ I would just believe it. I would get [the costume department] to tighten my corset a lot.

I just got very, very self-conscious.”The body image struggles affected Turner’s desire to socialize.“I had no motivation to do anything or go out.

Even with my best friends, I wouldn’t want to see them, I wouldn’t want to go out and eat with them,” she continued. “I just would cry and cry and cry over just getting changed and putting on clothes and be like, ‘I can’t do this.