To All the Boys I Loved Before turned Lana Condor into a star, but she never expected the film’s success to have a negative effect on her mental health.
“[The first movie] was received way better than I had ever imagined in my wildest dreams. It changed much of my life very quickly,” the actress, 23, told Self in her February 2021 cover story. “And then I was shooting this television show that was really dark [Deadly Class].”
Condor told the magazine that promoting the 2018 Netflix movie on weekends and being on the set of the Syfy series on weekdays began to take its toll over time.
“I was just saying yes to everything because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and you want to capitalize on it, and you want to feel like you’re fully embracing everything. But I’ve never felt more horrible mentally. I was so burned out,” she recalled. “I would go home at night and I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I would shake going to bed and shake waking up because it was just so much stimulation.”
Eventually, it all became too much for the Vietnam native, so she called her team to discuss her schedule.
“I had this moment where I just was in tears, telling them that I don’t feel OK. And they were all shocked because I wasn’t open about my feelings,” she said. “No one knew. When I had that conversation with them, it was like a new beginning. Now I know the power of sharing that.”
Condor also had the support of her parents, Mary and Bob, and her boyfriend, Anthony de La Torre, whom she has been dating since August 2015.
“My mom and my dad are so supportive,” she told Self. “We’ve had conversations about ‘Lana, you need to stop. You’re clearly unhappy.’ … [And I said,] ‘OK, let’s figure out the root of that.’ My parents have been a great sounding board.”
As for de La Torre, 27, the X-Men Apocalypse star added, “Anthony has been just everything. He is so great at communicating, and he genuinely wants to know how I feel and what’s going on in my head, which [makes me] feel so loved and taken care of.”
Since then, Condor said that she has finally found a balance where she can “do what I love and also be the person that I want to be for myself.”
The MTV Movie & TV Award winner broke through with her role as Lara Jean Song Covey in the first To All the Boys movie. She reprised her role opposite Noah Centineo’s Peter Kavinsky in the 2020 sequel, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, and the final installment, To All the Boys: Always and Forever, which premieres on Netflix on Friday, February 12.
