'To All the Boys' Actress Lana Condor Talks About Body Dysmorphia

The pressure to look good can take a toll on anyone who works in the entertainment industry. But for actress Lana Condor, the struggle started years before she ever arrived in Tinseltown. In fact, it was her first big acting role that clued her in to her battle with body dysmorphia.

Condor, star of the hit movie series “To All the Boys,” spoke with People about the topic in an interview where she reflected on her high school days in a New York City performing arts school. With days split between academics and dance, she admitted that “the performing arts aspect was much more important than the academic side.”

All that time dancing meant fierce inspection and judgement of her body, however. “I was constantly critiquing myself because all you see is yourself in the mirrors, wearing the bare minimum,” she said. And over time that took a toll, until she realized she experienced body dysmorphia.

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a mental health condition that causes someone to obsess over “an imagined or very slight defect in their body,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. Condor said her struggles with BDD became apparent when she saw photos of herself on the red carpet at the premiere of her first movie, “X-Men: Apocalypse.”

“I remember at the time feeling like I looked horrible. I thought I had never been bigger, I had never looked worse,” she told People. “And then I see the photos again and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, Lana, the way you were talking about yourself and the way that you saw yourself was so not the reality.’”

Condor credits her family and boyfriend, singer Anthony De La Torre, for helping her with her mental health journey. “I really have not been very comfortable talking so openly about my mental health struggles, but he’s been the person who’s been like, ‘Let’s talk through this. There’s no shame behind it,’” she said. She and De La Torre also chose to leave Los Angeles and move to Seattle to help find space and peace.

The full interview is published in People magazine this week. Condor’s latest film, “To All the Boys: Always and Forever,” is available on Netflix now.

 

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For more information on body dysmorphia, visit The Mighty’s body dysmorphic disorder community.