Hannah Murray, the British actress known for five seasons on Game of Thrones and three on Skins, has revealed that she spent several years inside a wellness cult. She is now 36 and has left both acting and the wellness industry.
Murray told The Guardian in a weekend interview that she joined the cast of Skins as Cassie when she was 17, and quickly found herself caught up in a pattern of partying and substance use that she tied directly to the nature of acting work. "That was a big factor of being an actor: being chosen for a role makes you feel incredibly special," she said. "But it lasts only for that project. I was on this hamster wheel of, 'Where's the thing that's going to make me feel special forever?'"
She began meditating and, at age 27, was drawn into a wellness cult. She later suffered a psychotic break that ended with her being hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Murray said she was first introduced to the group through an energy healer she met on the set of Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit. While she described the cast and crew as excellent, certain elements of filming left her in a heightened physical state. "Every time there was pain in my stomach and chest. Nerves on fire. I was trembling with adrenaline," she explained. The healer, whom Murray refers to as Grace, offered to help, and one thing led to another until she found herself in a class being asked to describe what it felt like to be holding on to pillars of light.
She was still filming Game of Thrones at the time, work she described as requiring "an ability to invest in fantastical things — like CGI work on 'Game of Thrones,' where I was looking at a tennis ball and imagining it was a giant wolf."
Murray declined to name the cult. She described the appeal of wellness culture and why it caught her at a vulnerable moment. "But as someone looking for something to fix me entirely, a magic wand or silver bullet, the promise felt seductive and addictive," she said. She also reflected on how widespread wellness culture has become. "I realize now how pervasive it is. How often people you don't know will offer it as a remedy. You'll say, 'I'm not really sleeping,' and they'll say, 'Have you tried meditation?' It's everywhere, seen as an inherently positive solution."
Today she avoids meditation, yoga, and crystal shops entirely. "I don't quite know what might come up that might feel a bit too woo-woo for my personal threshold," she said.
Murray details her full experience in a memoir titled The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness.
