Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Lily Collins on Body Dysmorphia

Lily Collins' new movie To The Bone, about an anorexic girl, hits Netflix on July 14th, so she's making the rounds giving basically the same interview to a bunch of different publications. Here's what she had to say in an interview with Marti Noxon for Net-a-Porter's The Edit:

MARTI NOXON: Tell me about writing Unfiltered. Have you always thought of yourself as a writer?

LILY COLLINS: As a kid I used to write poems and song lyrics. I wrote for magazines aged 15 – I found the editor’s number in the back of the magazine and just cold-called her. With Unfiltered, my intent was to encourage others to use their voice, but I don’t think I realized that in doing that, I was actually finding my own

MN: When do you think that transition happened?

LC: It was while we were shooting To the Bone and I was writing. I had written the chapter on my experience with eating disorders a week before I got the script. Nothing’s by mistake! I got to go to an anonymous group with you and share my story and get told the facts for the first time. When I went through my eating disorder, I never sought medical assistance. I created myths in my head about how I should get through things, so the idea that I could surround myself with truth and feel comfortable enough to speak mine allowed me to breathe. There’s a scene in the film when we’re in group therapy talking about the euphoria we experience – I’d never heard that weird enjoyment we feel from being in the disorder worded that way before – and in that moment, you caught Lily understanding it as opposed to just Ellen, my character. 

MN: When we were editing the film, I felt really connected to that moment. A little, “A-ha!”

LC: From a young age, I’ve had a desire to put forward this perfect image, whatever perfect was. So even though there was all this un-prettiness going on inside of me, I wanted to make sure that my appearance and composure were a certain way. I imagined that people knew I had these secrets and they’d be judging. Now that I’ve put things out there I feel like I’m starting from a clean slate, so when I play a character I can let go more

Read the full interview at The Edit.

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