A Hollywood actress has spoken out about how her personal experiences with mental health have helped her to further her career – after a bipolar diagnosis led to an autobiographical self-help book, and offers of unusual on-screen roles.
Maria Bello, perhaps best-recognised as star of 1990s hit Coyote Ugly, was recently cast in supernatural horror film Lights Out, where she played a mother, troubled by mental illness, who strives to protect her daughter from a menacing ghost.
“I was able to use my experience [with bipolar disorder] and put it on the screen for the first time, remembering what it was to be that person who couldn’t get out of bed for three months,” she said.
“To really try to understand what it would be like to have my child at a time when I was in that space of not understanding what reality was; that was a real gift.”
The role comes less than a year after Ms Bello famously published her memoir, Whatever… Love Is Love: Questioning the Labels We Give Ourselves in 2015 – an autobiography which spoke out against the public stigma attached to mental illness and documented Ms Bello’s own experiences with bipolar disorder.
Young Australian actress Teresa Palmer, who played her on-screen daughter in Lights Out, said that that she was awestruck by Ms Bello’s performance.
“I saw her on day one and what she did with it and I was so moved by her little nuances of behaviour.
“It was a performance to be nominated for an Academy Award.
“I know so much about mental illness. It’s all through my family. I’ve experienced it, I know it so well that I’m very sensitive to when it’s portrayed on the screen,” she added.