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Harry Potter’s Evanna Lynch opens up about eating disorder battle which began at just 11
Evanna Lynch hopes her memoir will help fans see the ‘real her’ behind her Harry Potter character (Pictures: Rex / Getty / Warner Bros)
Evanna Lynch has opened up about the eating disorder she battled from the age of 11 and her recovery process from it.
The Harry Potter actress, 30, who starred as Luna Lovegood in the series, revealed the struggles she had faced with anorexia in her new memoir, The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: The Tragedy and The Glory of Growing Up.
While Evanna says she ‘doesn’t have an eating disorder at all anymore’, she admits the ‘healing process’ is ongoing throughout her life.
She told E! that she wanted to be open about the struggles she had faced at the age of 11 and 12, explaining: ‘You want to be honest, you know? I don’t want to just say, “Everything’s cool now, happier, I’ve fixed all these weird issues.”
‘So, I had to find a way that I could be honest about where I’m at, but be positive and leave people with a warm, inspired feeling.’
In an extract from her book, revealed in The Irish Times, Evanna revealed that she had had to fight ‘the urge to die’ at the darkest times in her life.
Evanna starred as Luna Lovegood after the Harry Potter books were the ‘only thing’ that took her mind away from her anorexia (Picture: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Enterta)
She writes: ‘When I first heard about anorexia, I never planned for it to become my thing. I didn’t connect to it or dwell on it or decide to try it out for a while.
‘All I’d known was that I was empty, unremarkable, unexceptional at everything, and that it would be hard to find love, friends, work, a place in the world at all, if I didn’t find something by which to define myself – and then I’d found it.
‘I think to me, being unremarkable was the same thing as being unlovable, and if I didn’t have love, I wouldn’t want to live, and if I didn’t want to live, I’d eventually die. And I really wanted to find a way to fight that urge to die.
While Evanna doesn’t have an eating disorder anymore, she says the healing is ‘ongoing’ (Picture: Rob Latour/Variety/REX)
‘People see eating disorders as slow self-destruction, but the intention is quite the opposite. It’s a stab at life, at asserting oneself.’
Evanna continued: ‘It’s a fierce, war-like struggle to battle all the voices – internal and external – telling you you’d be better off dead.
‘I hadn’t planned for this to be my path, was shocked to hear that dangerous, spiky word affixed to me by my sister but okay, now I’d found it, and here we were, and I didn’t know how – nor did I care – to find a way out of it.’
Evanna has been open about her battles in the past, crediting Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling for saving her life by giving her comfort when she needed it the most.
The pair had become penpals before she was cast in the movies as Evanna told J.K. that the book series was the ‘only thing’ that could take her attention away from her eating disorder.
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She revealed during her appearance on Dancing With The Stars in 2018: ‘I was in and out of hospital, getting these letters, her books and her kindness made me want to live again.’
Evanna also revealed to E! that she hopes her memoir will let her fans see the ‘real’ her rather than the ‘airy fairy’ character she portrayed on screen.
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