Lady Gaga has described the toll playing Patrizia Reggiani in House of Gucci took on her mentally and physically as she drew on her personal trauma to enhance her performance.
Gaga divulged shocking details of her method acting process in a new interview, having previously revealed she "lived" as her character for a year and a half, speaking with Reggiani's Northern Italian accent for nine months.
In a cover story for The Hollywood Reporter, the 'Born This Way' singer said she would usually start her day at 3am to begin her transformation into her role, often vomiting from a mixture of "anxiety, fatigue, trauma, exhaustion, commitment and love".
Gaga also recalled shooting a scene in which she gave co-star Salma Hayek "a heart attack" after tapping into her own past pain, including being raped by a music producer when she was 19.
"It's a scene where I knock a lit candle across the room. I was falling apart as [Patrizia] fell apart. When I say that I didn't break character, some of it was not by choice," she said.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Oscar winner had "experienced this kind of dissociative state before - including once when she was hospitalised".
Director Ridley Scott intervened at one stage, said Gaga, urging her not to push herself too far.
"Ridley said, 'I don't want you traumatising yourself'," she explained.
"And I said, 'I already have. I've already been through this anyway. I might as well give it to you.' And he said, 'Well, leave it here and don't do this to yourself anymore'."
The 35-year-old star said she used the pain she still feels "from being attacked when I was a young girl, from feeling left behind by people that I love, from feeling trapped that I can't go out into a world that I love" to inform her performance.
"I took that pain and I gave it to [Reggiani]."
Gaga also reflected on the price of fame, saying she "made a trade" when she decided to pursue her career in the way that she did.
"I didn't know what that trade was going to be, but it happened. And in a lot of ways, I feel like I've lost everything," she said.
