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Normalize inner panic
I’ve been on movie sets before where I had legitimate panic attacks where your body kind of races and you’re kind of feeling like your breath is racing, and your heart’s racing and you feel like you’re hyperventilating. But I’ve also had these other kind of weird panic attacks where your body just kind of shuts down. And in scenes where I was supposed to be open, I felt closed and that was like its own kind of very scary panic attack. And I was doing a movie called “Adventureland” where I had a scene, it was kind of a simple scene, but I was like saying goodbye to my parents ’cause I was moving to New York City.
And my body just shut down. I just had a panic attack and I asked if we can stop filming. And I went over to the director and I just said, “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened. I just froze.” And it was this very sweet, wonderful director, Greg Mottola, who every actor who works with him wants to work with him again. He’s just this lovely, sensitive person. And he took me aside, he said, “Oh, take a break everybody for five minutes.” He took me aside and he said, “I just want to let you know that not only do I understand what you’re experiencing right now, but I’d be so surprised if you didn’t experience it all the time. You’re doing a job that’s kind of emotional, that is demanding, and yet you’re also worrying if your hair looks like not dumb. And so like, I couldn’t understand how anybody would do the job you do. I certainly would never be able to.”
And I just had this like, you know, incredibly cathartic experience hearing that advice. And I went back and did the scene and it was great. The kind of weight off my shoulders was removed because the expectations I had for myself of being like perfect in every moment were just taken away. I just said, “Oh yeah, this job that I do does have difficult aspects to it and I shouldn’t try to ignore those things. I should try to just understand that they’re there. They’re probably always going to be there and let me just try to embrace them.”
All professions have unusual quirks, unusual difficulties that you probably think are pretty difficult to explain to somebody not in that field, but what I found is what I felt that day on that set was very normal, very common. My cousin is a sports journalist and he panics the day before a deadline writing about football. Again, it’s something that I think is totally unrelated to my experience as an actor in a movie. Yet we commiserate about that same fear.
Reframe and redirect
When I’m having my greatest feelings of anxiety or panic or worry, those are often the times that I’m doing something that I care the most about. You tend to not really have a lot of anxiety around things you don’t really care about doing. So what I try to kind of remind myself is that whenever I’m having those feelings of great discomfort or worry, it often means that it’s something I really care about and it’s kind of helped me navigate the world a little bit better. And I think that applies to kind of any job, that if the thing you’re worried about is a difficult presentation, a meeting with somebody who makes you nervous, it’s interesting and helpful to reframe those anxious feelings as just you caring a lot about the particular thing you’re doing.
And instead of worrying that I might have a panic attack during this presentation or this meeting, you could think, you know what? If I have a panic attack during this meeting, it’s because I really care about it. I’m going to take a second, I’m going to breathe and I’m going to remind myself that this anxiety comes from a place of really investing in what I’m talking about. I go to an acting coach and I had stage fright for a long time, and she gave me the best advice. She just said to me, “When you’re experiencing that anxiety on set, that’s the character experiencing anxiety, so use it. Even if the character is engaged in a confident scene, maybe beneath it, the person is panicking.” And it’s always helped me. It’s helped me because I’m no longer kind of denying the feelings that I’m having. And I’m also no longer terrified that I might have a feeling. Once you stop denying the feelings that you’re having and try to maybe redirect them to a healthy outcome, you don’t worry as much.
Calm down others
When I was on the set of my own movie as a director, Finn Wolfhard was the main character, and he’s just the loveliest, most talented young man. He’s a rock star, he’s a famous movie star. And so you think, wow, this kid must be so comfortable, must be so cool. And yet, like everybody I meet who’s very good at their thing, he was panicked the whole time. He was worried the whole time that he wanted to be good. And I said, it was like the second day, he had like a monologue the second day of the shoot, and I asked him how he was in the morning and he said, “Actually, I had a really tough night. I was kind of panicking about the scene today.” And I was so happy to be able to impart advice I got so many years ago as an actor. I took him aside and I said the thing I’ve always wanted to tell another actor, which is like, “Listen, I understand what you do. I understand it can be very difficult. I understand you’re putting yourself out there emotionally while also trying to remember three pages of dialogue while also worrying that the makeup that you’re wearing today maybe makes you look too vain. Finn, I just want to tell you what I heard from a wonderful other director that all of that’s normal. The fact that you don’t feel that every second is probably a miracle. When you do feel it, use it, have it be part of the scene.”
I do find that when I’m around people who kind of have similar emotional experiences that I do, which is to say kind of self-doubt, panic about future things, catastrophizing otherwise benign experiences, I love being in the position of giving advice, of helping somebody, of calming them down because it feels wonderful to help somebody. And then for the selfish reason of you seeing that actually, their fears are oftentimes your fear. And if you can be on the outside of it and give advice and hear yourself giving advice, it might help you the next time.