Downton Abbey star Jessica Brown Findlay has spoken candidly about her battles with eating disorders for the first time.
The actress, who revealed that she has been living with an eating disorder since she was just 14-years-old, said she had made the decision to speak up in order to help others.
'If you are lucky enough to speak and be heard, it might be something that could be useful to others,' she told The Telegraph. 'The more we have brave discussions like that going forward, the easier it is to talk about things, and the less alone we can feel. It’s certainly made me feel less alone.'
'I felt so alone for so long, and I just hid,' she continued. 'And then I started talking and held my head up, and instead of saying ‘sorry’ decided to tell myself that I matter.
'It’s about learning to stand up and say, "This is me, and that’s OK." I'm not going to be a better actor if I'm a dress size smaller. It's nothing to do with my brain.'
Brown Findlay left Downton Abbey in one of the period drama's most controversial episodes, with her character Lady Sybil dying very suddenly from a complication during childbirth. At the time, she said she had made the decision to leave the show in order to pursue a career in Hollywood and avoid being typecast.
‘I was much more afraid of becoming too comfortable in the Lady Sybil role than I was of leaving it,’ she told The Daily Mail at the time. ‘It’s great to be in something that people enjoy but I didn’t want to play Sybil for years and then discover it was the only thing I could do. That was a much more terrifying prospect than unemployment, so I took a deep breath, crossed my fingers, and leapt into the abyss.’
Since then, she has appeared in films including The Riot Club and A New York Winters Tale, and most recently starred in another ITV period drama - Harlots - although this time as a courtesan - very un-Lady Sybil. Talk about avoiding being typecast.
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