Sophie Turner Felt Pressured to Lose Weight While Filming ‘Game of Thrones’

Sophie Turner has been starring on Game of Thrones since she was in her early teens, which means that the actress has undergone a major transformation in the years that she’s been appearing on the small screen. While she’s gone through serious struggles in character as Sansa Stark, Turner had her fair share of battles behind the scenes.

Speaking to Marie Claire Australia, the actress opened up about her own mental health, which she says was affected when her body began changing.

“I have experienced mental illness firsthand and I’ve seen what it can do to the people around [the sufferers] as well,” she said. “My metabolism suddenly decided to fall to the depths of the ocean and I started to get spotty and gain weight, and all of this was happening to me on camera.”

Turner said she received pressure from film and television studios to lose weight, ultimately turning to a professional to help deal with her surroundings.

“Therapy,” the 23-year-old revealed. “Everyone needs a therapist, especially when people are constantly telling you you’re not good enough and you don’t look good enough. I think it’s necessary to have someone to talk to, and to help you through that.”

Turner recently opened up about the same topic while speaking to Dr. Phil McGraw on a recent episode of his podcast, Phil in the Blanks.

“People used to say, ‘Damn, Sansa gained 10 lbs’ or ‘Damn, Sansa needs to lose 10 lbs’ or ‘Sansa got fat.’ It was just a lot of weight comments, or I would have spotty skin because I was a teenager and that’s normal, and I used to get a lot of comments about my skin and my weight and how I wasn’t a good actress,” she recalled.

“I would just believe it,” she added. “I would just say, ‘Yeah, I am spotty, I am fat, I am a bad actress.’ I just believed it. I’d get them to tighten my corset a lot. I just got very, very self-conscious. I would be concerned about angles, I’d be concerned about my face. It would just affect me creatively and I couldn’t be true to the character because I was just so worried about Sophie.”

Along with therapy, the actress credits new husband Joe Jonas with helping her self-confidence.

“I feel much better. I’ve been doing therapy at CAST centers, actually. I’m on medication,” she said. “I love myself now, or more than I used to, I think. I don’t think I loved myself at all. But I’m now with someone that makes me realize that I do have some redeeming qualities, I suppose. When someone tells you they love you every day, it makes you really think about why that is and I think it makes you love yourself a bit more. So yeah, I love myself.”

Photo Credit: Getty / Angela Weiss