Bad Romance? Lady Gaga suffers for her beloved art, including her acting.
In a roundtable conversation with fellow actresses Penélope Cruz, Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Hudson, Kristen Stewart and Tessa Thompson, published in The Los Angeles Times on Dec. 15, Gaga described herself as a "masochist" when she acts and "completely detached from real life." The star, who recently received a Golden Globe nomination for her role of power-hungry Patrizia Reggiani in House of Gucci, opened up about her "totally unhealthy" process to the group.
House of Gucci marks Gaga's second major movie after the Oscar-winning 2018 film A Star Is Born. For her recent film, she used her personal trauma to connect to her recent character in one scene where her character gets served with divorce papers at her daughter's school.
"I just remember saying, 'I'm going to yell at you for every woman on earth, for every woman that's been hurt in this way,'" Gaga said. "And then I took myself back to the place where I was assaulted in my own life. I still feel like a rock star that I have been able to pick myself up and keep going and keep working."
She added, "I kind of get off on that chaos for myself — reliving things that hurt me and bringing them back. It feels like I get to take something that was so painful and turn it into something meaningful. And yet I was such a f--king wreck after that scene. It did take me down."
For both her major film roles, the actress and pop star engaged in method acting. "For this, I was always Patrizia. I always spoke in my accent," Gaga said about House of Gucci on a recent episode of the Just for Variety With Marc Malkin podcast. "I brought the darkness with me home because her life was dark."
"I had a psychiatric nurse with me towards the end of filming," she added. "I sort of felt like I had to. I felt that it was safer for me."
Gaga continued, "I've done some pretty extreme art pieces throughout my career — the things I've put my body through, my mind. It's like a walnut of sadness in my stomach as I say this to you. I don't know why I'm like that. I think that the best answer I could give you is I have a sort of romantic relationship with suffering for your art that I developed as a young girl, and it just sometimes goes too far. And when it does go too far, it can be hard to reel it in on your own."