Anna Kendrick dug deep for her heart-wrenching performance in the movie “Alice, Darling.
Her performance is a tearjerker, provoking deep contemplation on what an abusive relationship can be.
The secret behind the stellar acting?
Anna drew inspiration from her own life as she’s endured a very toxic relationship for a long time.
In fact, this relationship got so intense that the actress ended up emailing the woman her partner was cheating on her with!
In the moving drama, directed by Mary Nighy and written by Alanna Francis,
Anna Kendrick plays Alice, a woman stuck in an emotionally abusive relationship with her successful boyfriend, Simon.
To her friends, ссAlice seems distressingly distant during a birthday trip.
The character slowly unravels due to the mind games her boyfriend has played on her, so her friends try to intervene and help.
The “Into The Woods” actress told People Magazine that Alice's story resonated with her for a specific reason.
When Anna received the script, she was coming out of a personal experience with emotional and psychological abuse.
She mentioned in an interview that she thinks her rep sent it to her because he knew what she had been dealing with.
"He was like, 'This sort of speaks to everything that you've been talking to me about.' " the 37-year-old shared.
According to the actress, the film and her role in it helped her understand the depths of her own abusive relationship.
“Alice, Darling” focuses on the emotional and psychological abuse that people can encounter and less on the physical one.
Kendrick explained that she had seen a lot of movies about abusive or toxic relationships, and it didn’t really look like what her experience with her ex was.
The actress said that “Alice, Darling” helped her normalize the idea that an abusive relationship isn’t always physical.
"Because I thought, 'Well, if I was in an abusive relationship, it would look like that.' " Kendrick shared.
The “Trolls” star said she was with this unnamed man for six years.
When describing her relationship on the “Armchair Experts” podcast, the actress revealed that her ex was “for all intents and purposes my husband.”
They even lived together, and initially, things were great.
“We had embryos together, this was my person.” Kendrick said.
However, things suddenly shifted into their sixth year together.
The singer saw her then-lover undergo a sudden personality shift.
"I remember telling my brother, when things had first kind of gone down, ‘I’m living with a stranger. Like, I don’t know what’s happening.'" she said.
The Academy Award nominee described this relationship as one where she loved and trusted this person more than she did herself.
When her former partner told Anna that she had a distorted sense of reality and that she was an impossible person, she believed him.
Her ex gaslit the actress into believing that all her suspicions about the relationship were wrong.
The actress explained that life gets confusing really quickly when someone is constantly telling you that your view of the world is skewed.
Thankfully, Kendrick was in a situation where she had the unique experience of finding out that all her suspicions were correct.
“So I had this kind of springboard for feeling and recovery that a lot of people don't get," she said.
Explaining the behavior that made her relationship toxic, Anna said that her ex-boyfriend would go into fits of rage.
"It was so alarming, and it was so much easier for me to assume I was crazy or I was doing something wrong," she said.
In an interview on the “Armchair Expert” podcast, the actress explained that the relationship reached a point where her former partner would scream at her until she was “curled in a ball sobbing.”
Eventually, she began leaning into things like believing her partner had a brain tumor to explain his behavior.
“That actually gave me a moment of relief,” Kendrick expressed.
As she explained, telling herself that her boyfriend was sick stopped her from believing that she had done something so horrible that she deserved to live with a stranger who scared the crap out of her.
Anna had no idea why this was happening. Eventually, her partner revealed that he had feelings for someone else.
Still, at that point, Anna continued to try and work on the relationship through couple's therapy.
The fact that this man had feelings for another woman didn’t sway her to end things.
The actress wasn’t sticking around for the fear of losing a relationship or being single.
"It was that I believed that if we broke up or, you know, if he left basically, it was a confirmation that it's because I'm impossible,
I'm lucky that he's even tolerating my b-----t," the 37-year-old explained.
Kendrick believed that the end of this relationship meant she was truly awful as a person because, after six years, her boyfriend suddenly started acting strange toward her.
The actress put a pause on her whole life to deal with her tumultuous relationship.
She kept holding on to the hope of what it could be if things were fixed.
"I mean, look, I truly dismantled my life, and at first, that was as a reaction to the accusation that I was crazy and I was the one causing the problem," she explained.
So, Anna had a conversation with CAA, her agency, and said she needed to take time off because she had a mental health problem.
Then the “Mr. Right” actress discovered that her boyfriend was unfaithful when she found texts between him and another woman.
"I was exposed to a yearlong text exchange and went, 'Oh, I was right about everything.' It was actually way worse,'" she recalled.
When the actress confronted her then-partner about the texts, he denied everything and became angry that she brought it up.
When this former boyfriend told Anna he had feelings for another woman, they never addressed the matter.
While the actress was trying to find ways to mend her broken relationship, her boyfriend just swept the situation under the rug.
Kendrick said that for the next year, she felt like there was an unspoken mandate to not talk about the change.
Whenever she attempted to hash out the problem, her ex would become increasingly hostile and made Kendrick feel like her concerns were nonsense.
The actress said she remembered her boyfriend screaming at her in therapy a year into their relationship.
“It was a passing crush. You’re so insecure. I never had a relationship with this girl,” he claimed. The texts proved otherwise.
One of the messages Anna found said, “After a week of f---ing you, I want to blow up my life for you and just say the word, and we’ll ride off into the sunset together.”
The “Pitch Perfect 2” star already knew her then-boyfriend had feelings for someone else, but seeing concrete evidence of his infidelity sparked something in her.
Suddenly, she found herself slowly releasing the grip holding onto this relationship.
Although, as we mentioned earlier, Kendrick’s ex-partner would often gaslight her into believing she has a distorted view of reality.
He also flat-out denied everything about him cheating and, when caught, tried to play the situation off as if it was no big deal.
Of course, this made the actress’s head spin!
So, she e-mailed the woman who her former partner had been cheating on her with.
“I just think it’s fair that you know that I know. I don’t put this at your doorstep. You made a mistake, but you’re 25.
We’ve all done stupid s—t. I very much lay this at his doorstep.” Anna wrote to the other woman.
The e-mail also mentioned that the actress knew the situation was uncomfortable, but she really just wanted to talk.
Thankfully, the younger woman responded, asking if she could give the actress a phone call.
The two women talked on the phone for about an hour.
In this conversation, the younger woman apologized to Anna, saying she was so embarrassed and that her actions were a mistake.
This phone call was all the actress needed to confirm that she needed to get out of that relationship.
The Tony Award nominee explained that even though quite some time has passed since this relationship ended,
it’s still hard for her to forgive herself for letting everything escalate to where it did.
Although, she knows that reaching the point of talking to her ex-boyfriend’s fling gave her the closure and clarity she needed to move on.
“I should’ve just been like, ‘Get the f—k out of my house, but I think that I would’ve always wondered, ‘Was that fair?’ … ‘Was I being unreasonable?,” Anna confessed.
Even though she saw the texts, and knew her boyfriend was toying with her head, the actress felt that she needed to speak to this woman.
The conversation was infinitely more valuable to her, and finally gave her the closure and assurance she needed to end the relationship.
Hearing the woman confirm everything made Anna realize that she wasn’t crazy.
In the time that her relationship became so toxic, the actress was constantly in a total state of panic.
This translated physically, where her body set itself to survival mode.
However, after talking to the other woman, for the first time in a whole year Kendrick’s body felt at ease.
“You can grieve. You’re not crazy. You’re safe. You can eat nachos. You can have a glass of wine,” she told herself.
After going through this rollercoaster, Anna said she's prioritizing her mental health and getting help.
“I started seeing two therapists a week and I started trying to learn to meditate," the “Love Life” alum said.
She also used AA support groups, and other similar platforms, which ended up helping her greatly.
These groups provided Anna with an outlet to explore different perspectives and experiences of abusive relationships.
“Initially I went into them thinking, ‘Tell me how to stop being crazy. Tell me how to stop feeling anything,’” she shared.
Anna Kendrick’s painful experience with love is why her movie “Alice, darling” is so important.
Abusive relationships are not always physi cal, and Anna’s story and this movie are a testimony to that.
If you are experiencing a mental health crisis or someone you love is in danger, the following resources can provide immediate help.
Calling 988 will connect you to a crisis counselor regardless of where you are in the United States.
Crisis Text Line: Text REASON to 741741.
In English and Spanish, it is free and available 24/7.