Penn Badgley is opening up about his early struggles with body image, long before “Gossip Girl” and “You” made him a household name.
In an interview with The Guardian to promote the final season of “You,” the actor said he experienced body dysmorphia during his adolescent years, but acknowledged he never received a formal diagnosis.
“I know that I hated my body and simply wanted a different one,” Badgley told the outlet.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, body dysmorphia or body dysmorphic disorder is a mental health condition where a person has an obsessive focus on perceived flaws in their appearance. It can lead to stress, anxiety and even suicidal ideations.
Badgley pointed to his parents’ divorce as taking a negative toll on his self-esteem, after which he began overeating in response. When he began acting at age 12, making his first on-screen appearance with a small role on “Will & Grace,” he said his pressures only increased.
“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,” he said. “There’s no way to get past the superficiality of this work, and if you recognize that, you can’t help but recognize the superficiality of our culture, because of the way it rewards this work.”
These days, Badgley is happily a married father of two, though his family is set to grow later this year. In February, his wife Domino Kirke revealed on Instagram that the couple are expecting a set of twins.
He’s also learned to cope with the continued scrutiny over his appearance in Hollywood by way of spirituality, noting he prays and meditates daily.
“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,” he said.
Season 5 of “You,” which hits Netflix last week, will see Badgley portraying the murderous antihero Joe Goldberg for the last time. Though the actor is tight-lipped on specifics, he said he believes the series “reached truly the best resolution for him.”
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