Inside Tuppence Middleton’s acting journey with obsessive-compulsive disorder
The Downton Abbey actor gets candid about the intrusive thoughts encircling her daily existence, and how performance sets her free.
How often did Elizabeth Taylor think about vomit? It’s not the obvious question for an actor to ask when they are about to embark on playing the infamous Hollywood icon on the London stage, but one that had entered my mind perhaps more often than it should. Back in 2023, I was about to spend months of my working life embodying this glamorous, brave, enticing star, and yet I managed to waste the first 10 minutes of the entire process obsessing about contagion. It was the first day of rehearsals for Sam Mendes’s stage production of The Motive and the Cue and, with a 19-strong cast and a production team of 10, there was an awful lot of handshaking.
Hands unknown to me. Hands that had touched door handles, toilet seats, public transport … other people. When I should have been exchanging pleasantries and remembering names, I was conducting a silent screening process of those around me. Pallid complexions, low energy, number of children at preschool or of school age. Did a sweaty palm mean first-day nerves or a dormant virus incubating in an unsuspecting immune system? Could I avoid touching my face all morning? How long until a tea break was called, so I could finally go and wash my hands?
For someone who has suffered with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) for as long as I have, these thoughts may feel familiar, but for those who know very little about the condition, they might sound extreme or even comical in nature. Having been diagnosed at 11 years old, a vast spectrum of obsessions – from infection and disaster prevention to panic attacks and emetophobia (fear of vomiting) – have dominated my daily life. What began as a series of mental counting rituals at a young age quickly grew into a pattern of obsessive thinking that controlled my behaviour in ways that affected every aspect of my life. Although my OCD thrives in an expanse of time and space, it can also disrupt the busier, more distracted moments in my life, particularly at work.
The life of an actor is almost certainly not one suited to a person with OCD. There is a constant change of environment, intimate contact with co-stars and exposure to an ever-changing routine and frequent new people. At various points in my career, I have been faced with situations at complete odds with the compulsions I have set up to help me navigate my way through the world. I have performed sex scenes with sleep-deprived co-stars who have spent the night tending to children with stomach bugs. I have been dressed by a costumier who relayed they had vomited until 3am the previous night (while standing 10 terrifyingly infectious centimetres from my face). At the swanky house party of a film producer, I have been served canapés topped with a single raw egg, carrying the potential to infect me with salmonella and subject me to a bout of food poisoning worthy of nightmares.
Every time I am confronted with these seemingly minor occurrences, I am subjected to days of miserable, obsessional over-analysis, leading to a flurry of compulsive rituals and behaviours that are my attempts to keep me ‘safe’. Fanatical googling of imagined symptoms, magical thinking, bargaining with the mysterious powers of the universe to protect me, repeatedly counting corners eight times in exchange for sparing me the horror of a vomit-inducing virus. Here I am, thinking about vomit again. Elizabeth Taylor wouldn’t waste her time thinking about vomit.
The worst of my symptoms were felt in my 20s, when the anxiety peaked to cause several panic attacks a week. I sought help through medication and therapy. Nowadays, I have found it much easier to be open about my condition with my colleagues, thanks to the growing conversation around mental health that has occurred during the past few years. It enables me to manage my anxiety around certain scenarios. I will be honest with others from the beginning about my obsessions and try to help people understand some of my more unpalatable thought processes. I will always know where the nearest bathroom is, so I can wash my hands. I know the tools I have at my disposal when I feel overwhelmed will always be in place. If stress translates into compulsive behaviour and my household appliance screening or door-checking threatens to make me late for an appointment, I’ll take pictures of my front door – or the taps or the godforsaken oven – so I can check later that day that they are closed, or off, and buy myself more time.
And if the enormity of my symptoms becomes too much for me to manage alone, I know the support systems I have invested in previously – friends, family, therapists or medication – are there to hold me up once again.
Aside from the many ways acting challenges the worst elements of OCD, it has also forced me into situations that continue to allow me to confront my fears. To disappear into a character is to become another person. That can be a blissful escape when the body and mind you inhabit is intent on punishing you for partaking in normalities that make up the everyday. There have been times where I have been afraid to speak up about my obsessions (an eight-person orgy scene in which all actors were semi-naked, kissing, sharing saliva; not to mention exposure to multiple, constantly changing cuisines, transportation methods and travel itineraries) and there have been other times, since opening up about my OCD, where I’ve felt comfortable to express my concerns from the very start.
In a production of Annie Ernaux’s The Years in London earlier this year, I was taken aback by the curiosity and support offered by the all-female cast I was joining on stage. Many of them had bought and read my book about OCD, Scorpions, during our rehearsal process in an attempt to understand the inner workings of my brain. This not only served as a kind of human instruction manual for them but also allowed us to open up to each other and discuss our experiences of mental health as a group, celebrate our differences and make adjustments whenever a confronting scenario might show up. It is this openness and honesty that has propelled me and encouraged me to talk more publicly about the intricacies of my own experience with OCD.
The escape into a fantasy world or inside a character so unlike myself can offer me a safe haven, a place to lose myself and meet another way of being. But behind the facade, my scorpions – those sneaky, needling obsessional thoughts running loose in my brain – are ever present. So as I stood by in the wings of the theatre two years ago on The Motive and the Cue, having completed the first draft of what would eventually become my book, I was ready and waiting to give my first performance as the illustrious Ms Elizabeth Taylor. I inhaled the fear and uncertainty, the doubt and cyclical thinking and exhaled the words of the screen heroine herself: “I’ve been through it all, baby, I’m Mother Courage.”
Tuppence Middleton is the author of Scorpions (Rider, $39.99), on sale now.
This story is from the June issue of Vogue Australia.
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