Maisie Williams — or as many of us know her, Arya Stark, has revealed that all that glitters is not gold. There’s a dark side to being famous.
“Game Of Thrones” actress, Maisie Williams, has opened up about one major side effect to being famous.
There may be a ton of perks to being in the limelight, but there’s a catch — it may cost you your mental health.
Maisie isn’t the only “Game Of Thrones” star to open up about how being famous has taken a toll on their mental health.
Sophie Turner has also given us a glimpse at how her mental health has been affected by being on GoT .
Sophie explained that her mental health isn’t something she takes lightly, because she has been suffering from depression since she was 17 years old.
She also shared that issues with mental health run in her family.
“Since I was young, we’ve had a whole mental health thing in my family,” she said.
“I think it was a combination of social media [being] on the rise at that time and also my friends were going to university, and I wasn’t going to university,” she revealed to Dr. Phil .
Entering the spotlight only made things worse for Sophie — as fans were constantly criticizing her appearance, leaving harsh comments on social media.
“It was just a lot of weight comments,” she said.
“Or I would have spotty skin because I was a teenager – and that’s normal,” she went on.
“I used to get a lot of comments about my skin and my weight and how I wasn’t a good actress.”
“I would just believe it,” she confessed. “I would just say, ‘Yeah, I am spotty, I am fat, I am a bad actress.”
“I had no motivation to do anything or go out,” she admitted. “Even with my best friends; I wouldn’t want to see them; I wouldn’t want to go out and eat with them.”
Sophie admitted that she asked the costume staff on set to tighten her corset as she became more and more “self-conscious”.
“It would just affect me creatively, and I couldn’t be true to the character because I was so worried about Sophie,” she said.
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Maisie Williams was experiencing a very similar feeling.
She recently revealed in a podcast that she would let the negative criticisms get to her and it caused her to start hating herself.
“I went through a huge period of my life where I’d tell myself every day that I hated myself,” she explained.
She then revealed that even while she was with her friends, she would feel anxious — overanalyzing herself and reading into small details, blowing them out of proportion.
“It got to the point where I’d be in a conversation with my friends and my mind would be running and running and running,” she continued.
“And thinking about all the stupid things I’ve said in my life and all the people who’ve looked at me a certain way.”
She admits that even though she has gotten a lot better at ignoring the haters, the pressures of being a young celebrity still creep up on her every now and again.
“This is why people go insane; I get it now,” she said .
“It got to me a lot because there’s just a constant feed in your back pocket of what people think of you,” she said.
“It gets to a point where you’re almost craving something negative so you can sit in a hole of sadness, and it’s really bizarre the way it starts to consume you.”
Now that “Game Of Thrones” is coming to an end, Maisie is looking forward to having a much quieter, low-key lifestyle.
“Honestly, I want a normal life with people that I love and people I know are true and care about me,” she said.
She then revealed that she thinks the cost of being famous is more trouble than it’s worth.
“I don’t want any of this crazy, crazy world because it’s not worth it,” she said .
