Hannah Murray, the British actress best known for her five seasons on “Game of Thrones” and three on “Skins,” revealed in a weekend interview that she spent several years trapped in a wellness cult.
“But as someone looking for something to fix me entirely, a magic wand or silver bullet, the promise felt seductive and addictive,” she admitted to The Guardian.
Murray joined the cast of “Skins” as Cassie when she was 17. She soon found herself on a bit of a hamster wheel of partying and substance use, something she attributed to working as an actor.
“That was a big factor of being an actor: being chosen for a role makes you feel incredibly special,” she said. “But it lasts only for that project. I was on this hamster wheel of, ‘Where’s the thing that’s going to make me feel special forever?’”
She started meditation, which in turn led her to a wellness cult at age 27. She suffered a psychotic break that ended with her hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
At age 36, she’s left both acting and the wellness industry.
“Even the tame stuff can feel quite distressing. I don’t meditate any more. I wouldn’t go into a crystal shop. I don’t do yoga, because I don’t quite know what might come up that might feel a bit too woo-woo for my personal threshold,” she said.
“But I realize now how pervasive it is. How often people you don’t know will offer it as a remedy. You’ll say, ‘I’m not really sleeping,’ and they’ll say, ‘Have you tried meditation?’ It’s everywhere, seen as an inherently positive solution. And there are harmless or positive versions. But as someone looking for something to fix me entirely, a magic wand or silver bullet, the promise felt seductive and addictive.”
Though Murray declined to name the cult, she said she was first introduced by way of an “energy healer” on the set of Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit.” While she said the cast and crew were excellent, elements of filming (such as when her dress is ripped open before her character is sexually assaulted) often left her in a heightened state.
“Every time there was pain in my stomach and chest. Nerves on fire. I was trembling with adrenaline,” she explained. The energy healer (who Murray refers to as Grace), offered to help. One thing turned into another, and she found herself in a class being asked to describe what it felt like to be “holding on to pillars of light.”
At the time, she was still filming “Game of Thrones,” where she was asked to do things like have “an ability to invest in fantastical things – like CGI work on ‘Game of Thrones,’ where I was looking at a tennis ball and imagining it was a giant wolf.”
Murray details the experience in her book, “The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness.”
Read the full interview at The Guardian.
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