Toni Collette shares acting role she struggled to recover from after nearly two years

Toni Collette has played a whole bunch of emotionally demanding and intense roles throughout her career, but one was particularly difficult to get over once filming wrapped.

The Australian film star has received numerous accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award, plus nominations for an Academy Award, a Tony Award and two BAFTAs.

Since starring in the acclaimed comedy drama Muriel’s Wedding, she has starred in The Sixth Sense, About a Boy, Little Miss Sunshine, The Way, Way Back and the TV series United States of Tara, and more.

Basically, if you see Collette’s name in the credits, you know you’re going to get a fantastic performance.

However, the 50-year-old star has now revealed which character left her recovering after nearly two years had passed, which made her realise she ‘needed to take better care’ of herself.

Collette says she’s usually asked how she lets her characters go once the cameras stop rolling. 'How do you shake it off? Are you a Method actor? What do you do to let go of a character? Do you take it home with you?’ she recalls in a new interview with Huffington Post.

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She explained: “I’m always like, ‘No, no, no, absolutely not’. But then I realised, accumulatively, I was carrying stuff. The body doesn’t know what is fiction and what is real, so if I’m feeling it, the body is like, ‘S***, this is really happening’.”

The role many fans would probably assume is the one she struggled to get over is her mind-blowing stint as miniatures artist Annie Graham in Hereditary. But, Collette said she was ‘fine’ after appearing in that horror film, and the 2021 true crime inspired drama The Staircase.

She explained: “The job that made me realise I needed to take better care of myself was Miss You Already, where I played a character who ultimately died from cancer.”

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The 2015 drama follows two lifelong pals, played by Collette and Drew Barrymore, whose lives are changed drastically when Collette’s character, Milly, is diagnosed with breast cancer.

“A year and a half later, I still found myself thinking about it, and I was like, ‘This is not right; I shouldn’t be carrying it around in any way’," she recalled.

“So, I just had to figure out a way to take care of myself – which I did, and I do.”

Collette taught herself coping mechanisms after filming Miss You Already, which helped her when filming the Ari Aster modern horror classic.

“I was taking care of myself progressively throughout the shoot,” she said, adding: “I didn’t wait till the end and realise, ‘Oh my God, I’m depleted, I’m going to collapse here’. I figure out ways daily how to come back to myself and shed what’s not mine. And it works.”