Anna Kendrick says she recently suffered “psychological abuse” from a boyfriend.
The actress, 37, made the claim days before she is due to be seen in cinemas playing a woman in the same situation in “Alice, Darling”, which is to be released in the US on September 12.
Kendrick, who did not reveal the name of the boyfriend, told PEOPLE on Wednesday that the relationship ended before she signed on to star in the film, and said her recovery had been challenging.
She said she was able to immediately connect with the script for “Alice, Darling”: “I was coming out of a personal experience with emotional abuse and psychological abuse.
“I think my rep sent (the script) to me, because he knew what I’d been dealing with and sent it along. Because he was like, ‘This sort of speaks to everything that you've been talking to me about’.
“It felt really distinct in that I had, frankly, seen a lot of movies about abusive or toxic relationships and it didn’t really look like what was happening to me.
“It kind of helped me normalise and minimise what was happening to me because I thought, ‘Well, if I was in an abusive relationship, it would look like that’.”
She said she struggled to deal with the trauma because the man had been someone she trusted.
Kendrick said: “I was in a situation where I loved and trusted this person more than I trusted myself.
“So when that person is telling you that you have a distorted sense of reality and that you are impossible and that all the stuff that you think is going on is not going on, your life gets really confusing really quickly.
“I was in a situation where, at the end, I had the unique experience of finding out that everything I thought was going on was in fact going on. So I had this kind of springboard for feeling and recovery that a lot of people don’t get.”
The actress also said figuring out what “really happened” with her ex was “the hardest task of my adult life”.
She added: “My body still believes that it was my fault. So even with this concrete jumping-off point for me, to walk out of that relationship knowing that I wasn’t crazy – it’s incredible the way that recovery has been so challenging.”
Kendrick’s exes include Edgar Wright, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Richardson and Bill Hader, who she dated from 2020 until 2022.
A plot summary for “Alice, Darling” reads: “A young woman trapped in an abusive relationship becomes the unwitting participant in an intervention staged by her two closest friends.”
Kendrick said it was the first time she had felt a deep connection with one of her roles. “Usually, it’s just, I read a good script and I like the people involved, and I make the movie.
“And it was really surprising timing that we found this script at that moment in my life. And in fact, I remember my first Zoom meeting with Mary Nighy, the director, disclosing to her what I was going through.
“And I even said to her, ‘This all happened very recently. In fact, it happened so recently that if the movie was shooting in a month, I probably shouldn’t do it’.
“But it was many, many months away. So I wasn’t in danger of re-traumatising myself. But yeah, it’s certainly a unique experience.”
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