Amanda Seyfried: Anxiety Caused Her To Seek Counseling After Admitting She Was ‘Drunk’ On David Letterman

Amanda Seyfried has suffered from anxiety attacks that go beyond the typical butterflies-in-the-tummy stage fright. The actress says that at one point, she even got drunk prior to a televised interview because she thought it might help alleviate her anxiety, reported the Daily Mail.

The turning point occurred in 2012, when Amanda was nervous about an interview with David Letterman. Seyfried resorted to booze in an attempt to blast her nerves. But when she realized that alcohol wasn’t the solution for her extreme anxiety, the actress sought professional counseling.

Then age 29, Amanda had been scheduled on the Letterman show to talk about Les Miserables. Instead of publicizing the show, however, she earned attention for her broadcast confession that she was “pretty drunk” from gulping whisky shots.

Although she thought drinking whisky was fun at the time, watching it after the show aired made her recognize that she needed help.

“It made it fun for me, but then I watched it and was like ‘That is not what I want to promote about myself,” said Amanda.

Seyfried also has opened up about her generalized anxiety when it comes to live stage performances, reported Theater Mania.

Now acting in The Way We Get By, Amanda took on this new role precisely because she wanted the opportunity to challenge her fears. Although she’s known for her success in Mean Girls and Mamma Mia! as well as other films, Seyfried chose the theater role as the perfect way to debut on stage.

“I’ve been looking for a play for about five years. I really wanted to get out of this zone that I’ve been in for so long, feeling lazy as an actor. I wanted to fight this fear that I have of being onstage, all the anxiety I have in general of live audiences,” she explained.

But when she read the play, she felt enthusiastic.

“In terms of projection, and being kind of bullied my whole life about being too quiet, and not being trusted by certain people to do their plays because of my issues with projection, I have had no issues of that here,” Amanda said proudly.

In opening up about bullying and her psychological problems, Seyfried joins celebrities such as Portia de Rossi, Lady Gaga, and Demi Lovato in sharing her condition and recovery, as the Inquisitr reported.

Portia, Lady Gaga, and Demi have all revealed that they struggled with eating disorders, recalling their own experiences with bullying and their roads to recovery.

[Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images]