House of the Dragon actress Olivia Cooke is beginning up about her mental health, sharing that she accomplished a “full mental breakdown” at age 22. Now 28, the British actress tells the detective that she opposes solitude while filming the A&E series Bates Motel in Canada.
Cooke says”I’m so grateful for that job, but I had a really tough time on it,” who played Emma Decode in the Hitchcock-inspired drama, which ran from 2013 to 2017. “The way the schedule worked, we all had different storylines, so a lot of my time was spent in this suite in Vancouver, working once every two weeks.”
By 2016, that sense of isolation had grown into full-fledged depression, she tells the U.K. publication.
She says of her “full mental breakdown“It was a big old lovely cocktail: being homesick and not knowing it, having not stopped since I was 18, being on my own for large swathes of time”It was bad, bad. Awful, actually.”But the Sound of Metal star didn’t step back from acting to focus on her mental well-being.
Cooke says” Oh, no, I was working all the way through,” who at the time was shooting both Ready Player One and Thoroughbreds. “I was very good at hiding it. If anything, I was like, let me escape myself.”
It wasn’t until 2019 that she noticed a more significant reprieve from “the incessant, persistent, anxious thoughts” that plagued her. Now starring as Alicent Hightower on HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel, Cooke says she’s found herself in a “sweet spot” these days — something she credits to her new TV gig, a move back to London after a breakup with Girls actor Christopher Abbott and the chance to have something of a break amid the pandemic.
And while Olivia Cooke is still months shy of turning 29, she’s eager to embrace what’s ahead.