I hated my body and didn’t want to be in it – Aimee Lou Wood

Aimee Lou Wood has spoken about struggling with body dysmorphia and talked about there become a time when “I hated my body and didn’t want to be in it”.

The 29-year-extinct actress rose to prominence starring as Aimee Gibbs in Netflix’s Sex Schooling, a characteristic for which she become awarded a Bafta for best feminine comedy efficiency.

At this year’s Harper’s Bazaar International Girls’s Day event on Thursday, Wood spoke candidly about her relationship with her body, saying: “My previous with eating disorders and body dysmorphia, I felt love a floating head.

“I hated my body and didn’t want to be in it – that’s no longer the case to any extent extra, thank God.

“Nonetheless then, going to drama college, it can gain even worse. I relish scoliosis, so neutral for me is no longer neutral for everybody else.

“You slump to drama college and everybody’s being straightened out. It’s no longer easy being told you’re moving sinister – it’s basically a tirade on your body.”

Stockport-born Wood, who spoke on the Connaught in London along with writer Naomi Alderman and MP Tulip Siddiq, additionally admitted it become a reduction no longer to in truth feel love a “mannequin” while working on her most up-to-date movie Living.

Speaking about her abilities of working with British costume clothier Sandy Powell on the placement of the movie, which additionally stars Bill Nighy, Wood talked about: “I’ve had many abominable experiences with costume designers because of us forget that you’re a person with feelings and no longer a mannequin.

“One told me to eat radishes to fit reduction into a pair of jeans… Sandy (Powell) is one in all the best costume designers there could be. She saw me in precise life and labored it around me.

“She become asking me what I conception Margaret (Wood’s personality in Living) would attach on. She wasn’t trying to beget me fit into how she saw her.

“How will you presumably be the sinister shape and dimension if that you would possibly well presumably be the personality?”

Following the success of Sex Schooling, which additionally stars Bafta Rising Huge name winner Emma Mackey and forthcoming Time Lord Ncuti Gatwa, Wood admitted she realized the impress’s popularity “very overwhelming”.

“It’s unreal how mercurial my life modified,” she talked about.

“We had no opinion that it become going to be as huge as it become. For all of us, it become quite a shock.

“You’re walking down the boulevard and all of a unexpected your face is identified.

“Amazing things relish reach from it, but it had an staunch attain on my psychological effectively being – I became a recluse, because most actors are no longer notorious. Easiest now am I in truth starting to relish it.”

She added: “Individuals don’t scrutinize that you’re a person that could possibly well be going thru their very gain stuff – they take into tale at you as a novelty.”

On her most up-to-date mission, which sees her huge name as Sally Bowles in Cabaret on the Kit Kat Club at London’s Playhouse Theatre, Wood talked about: “My mates and my family all know that right here’s the thing in my profession that has intended the most to me.

“I think of us would be bowled over at what we as actors find most profound. Sally, for me, become in truth non-public. It become something I location an intention for, to play that segment, since I become 10.”

She added: “Connecting reduction to the precise Sally Bowles, knowing that she wasn’t supreme, helped me.”