Penn Badgley is getting candid about a hard period of his life.
As you may know, the You star began his career in acting way before Gossip Girl. As a child, he appeared in shows like Will & Grace, The Young and the Restless, What I Like About You, and more before being launched into stardom. Despite having these great opportunities so young, he told The Guardian on Wednesday of child acting that he “would certainly not recommend it to anybody.” Why?? That’s a little complicated…
As he put it, his entry into the business was “an opportunity to put a pause on the collapsing family dynamic, sort of have this escape, or this fantasy.” However, he couldn’t escape the realities of what was happening at home through work.
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Being filmed, having his image scrutinized, eventually took a toll on the young Penn. He revealed he struggled with “body dysmorphia” as a kid — though never officially diagnosed by a doctor or psychologist. But looking back, he knows that was what he was battling. He said:
“I know that I hated my body and simply wanted a different one.”
Oof. So sad to hear. According to the Mayo Clinic, body dysmorphia is a mental health condition in which a person can’t stop thinking about “one or more perceived defects or flaws” in their appearance. You can sometimes spend hours each day “intensely” focused on “your appearance and body image, repeatedly checking the mirror, grooming or seeking reassurance,” and it can cause “significant distress and impact your ability to function in your daily life.”
The Easy A star explained he started overeating as a response to his parents’ divorce and the loneliness he felt, and he gained weight. At the same time, he also worshipped the men he saw in films — who were always in perfect, and in some action stars’ case, ridiculous shape — and believed he should look exactly like them. Naturally “that just seemed like an impossibility.” That internal battle fueled his condition. Penn called out Hollywood’s obsession with looks, saying:
“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. There’s no way to get past the superficiality of this work, and if you recognise that, you can’t help but recognize the superficiality of our culture, because of the way it rewards this work.”
With that, he had to also call out the show that launched him into the spotlight — Gossip Girl. He noted the beloved series reinforced these difficult beauty standards:
“What was that show other than aesthetic? That was its thing, the way we all looked.”
Also, Penn didn’t like the fame that came with the show:
“I didn’t particularly love the superficial celebrity aspect of the way I was perceived.”
Yet he’s seemingly gotten over it, or accepted it, these days. There was a time, though, that Penn thought he would quit acting. He credits the Baha’í faith — yes, the one recently made famous by Justin Baldoni — for getting him through everything:
“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.”
We applaud Penn for opening up about what might be such a tough subject for him. Reactions, Perezcious readers? Let us know in the comments below.
[Image via Will & Grace/NBC Studios, extratv/YouTube]
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