How Levy overcame his anxiety

Dan Levy may be popular and charismatic today, but he had debilitating anxiety as a child, said Anna Peele in Bustle.com. The star and co-creator of the Netflix show Schitt’s Creek refused to go to summer camp, birthday parties, or anything that involved social interaction. “Fear of being ridiculed,” he explains. “Fear of being ‘othered.’” He believes this fear manifested as iritis, a severe inflammation of the eye that doctors warned might rob him of sight. “I think that came from a deeprooted fear of knowing that I was gay and not being able to be free,” says Levy, 37. “It led to a very confusing time.” To provide a safe way of interacting with people, he began acting in and directing school plays. “It was like a decoy version of myself that I was putting out there to not have to live with the reality that when the bullying was happening—if someone was calling me a f----t or whatever it was—they were speaking the truth.” It took years for him to stop hiding his true self—even after coming out. “I really got to a point where I felt like if I didn’t make an active choice to pull myself out of this shell,” Levy says, “I would not be the adult that I want to be.”

Burstyn’s chats with her dead mother

Ellen Burstyn had a difficult relationship with her mother, said Ryan Gilbey in TheGuardian.com. The actress’ parents divorced when she was a child, and she and her two brothers went to live with her often violent mother, Correine. “I’m sure if [she] and I could sit down and talk about it today, she would say she was sorry,” says Burstyn, 88. When her mom was still alive, Burstyn did bring up “being hit so much” when she was young. “She said, ‘I’d never do it again.... Not now I know how much trouble it caused,’” Burstyn recalls. “I’m glad she understood that before she left.” Despite the painful memories, the actress misses her mother and often talks to her in her own mind. “I think it’s just to go back over the past,” she says. “I wish I could’ve been more helpful then and understood her point of view. And I do talk. I talk to the mother that lives inside of me.” She believes that enduring a painful childhood has made her a much better actress. For each role, the Oscar winner digs deep into a catalog of memories, often hurtful, from which she draws the necessary emotion. She says if she hadn’t learned to “abide trouble and suffering,” she might not have developed the bravery necessary “to haul up those uncomfortable things.”