Amanda Bynes is slowly dipping her toes back into the entertainment industry. The 32-year-old All That and Amanda Show star told PAPER magazine that after years away from the cameras, she wants to re-enter the business slowly but surely.
She admitted that drug use is what began the chain reaction of sinking her acting career. Marijuana turned into molly, which turned into ecstasy, which turned into Adderall — which she took so much of in order to stay thin, she couldn’t remember her lines.
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Her obsession with her weight, paired with continued drug usage, ensured that she had a “different reaction than everyone else” to the movie Easy A, her last film. She said she “literally couldn’t stand my appearance in that movie and I didn’t like my performance. I was absolutely convinced I needed to stop acting after seeing it.”
“I was high on marijuana when I saw that but for some reason it really started to affect me. I don’t know if it was a drug-induced psychosis or what, but it affected my brain in a different way than it affects other people. It absolutely changed my perception of things,” she said.
It all culminated in a moment when she sent the infamous tweet announcing her retirement from acting.
“I saw it and I was convinced that I should never be on camera again and I officially retired on Twitter, which was, you know, also stupid,” she said. “If I was going to retire [the right way], I should’ve done it in a press statement — but I did it on Twitter. Real classy! But, you know, I was high and I was like, ‘You know what? I am so over this’ so I just did it. But it was really foolish and I see that now. I was young and stupid.”
Her sudden retirement from acting, which had been a life-long pursuit up until then, left her feeling out of place. “I just had no purpose in life. I’d been working my whole life and [now] I was doing nothing,” she said. “I had a lot of time on my hands and I would ‘wake and bake’ and literally be stoned all day long.”
She described her days from then on out as being “just stuck at home, getting high, watching TV and tweeting.”
She said she regrets those tweets. “I’m really ashamed and embarrassed with the things I said. I can’t turn back time but if I could, I would. And I’m so sorry to whoever I hurt and whoever I lied about because it truly eats away at me. It makes me feel so horrible and sick to my stomach and sad,” she said. “Everything I worked my whole life to achieve, I kind of ruined it all through Twitter.” But don’t get her wrong — “it’s definitely not Twitter’s fault — it’s my own fault.”
Years later, Bynes has been sober for four years and is “back on track” thanks to her parents and a newfound passion for fashion at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles.
Her plans to re-enter the entertainment business are hopeful. She told the magazine that she wants to restart “kind of the same way I did as a kid, which is with excitement and hope for the best.” She wants the chance to “try it all” and “doesn’t want to limit myself” by only going for certain types of roles or productions.
She’s certainly got the experience to show off not just her well-known comedy chops, but more dramatic acting roles, too. Toni Hohbrg, the president of FIDM, said Bynes would be a great role model and someone who can give advice, “starting with young people in the fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth grades — people who are tempted by [others] around them.”
“She can talk to anybody about anything and say, ‘I’ve been there and done that and you can [overcome this] too,’” Hohberg said. “She could save so many young people today.”
