Angus Cloud candidly spoke about his struggles with addiction and mental health before his tragic death.
Cloud’s family announced that the actor had died in July 2023 one week after losing his father. He was 25 years old.
“It is with the heaviest heart that we had to say goodbye to an incredible human today. As an artist, a friend, a brother and a son, Angus was special to all of us in so many ways,” a statement to TMZ read. “Last week he buried his father and intensely struggled with this loss. The only comfort we have is knowing Angus is now reunited with his dad, who was his best friend.”
Cloud was best known for his breakout role on Euphoria as fan favorite Fezco — a drug dealer who has a strong relationship with Zendaya’s character, Rue. Fez marked Cloud’s first appearance on TV. The actor nabbed the part after he was approached by a casting director on the street in New York City.
“I was confused and I didn’t want to give her my phone number. I thought it was a scam,” he recalled of his audition in a 2019 interview with GQ. “I had to change [some of the lines] a little bit. To make it sound real, like how I would say it.”
Despite the hesitancy, Cloud accepted the role and often used his platform to spread awareness for mental health and addiction.
Keep scrolling to see his most candid quotes:
The Acting Fatigue
“[Acting] is a different kind of hard. I am not running around sweating, but it’s that mental s—t,” he explained to GQ in 2019. “You have to stay focused. You have to be on point. You can’t call in sick. Acting takes a lot out of you. I’d be drained, but I was just sitting there acting.”
How His ‘Euphoria’ Role Took a Toll
“Sympathy, yo. Because addiction is serious and a lot of doctors call it a disease, it’s a real thing. People don’t understand it. It’s easy to talk about and it’s easy to say, ‘Just say no,’” Cloud explained in an interview with Complex in February 2022. “But for someone who is in active addiction, that is damn near impossible and they will throw their whole life away and they will die because of this disease or whatever, and then they will say it’s not a disease because you ‘choose’ to do drugs. You don’t ‘choose’ to do cancer.”
The Fezco Comparisons
“It does bother me … when people are like, ‘It must be so easy! You get to go in and be yourself,’” he told Variety in 2022. “I’m like, ‘Why don’t you go and do that?’ It’s not that simple. I brought a lot to the character. You can believe what you want. It ain’t got nothing to do with me.”
How Fame Affected Him
“People knowing me and recognizing who I am. That s—t f—ks with my mind for sure,” he confessed to Interview Magazine in 2022. “I’d rather people didn’t recognize me. I’m not mad at them because they do, but I’d rather they didn’t. I just want to have regular interactions with people. I don’t want to be treated special.”
