Mena Suvari is a 44-year-old model and actress who portrayed Angela Hayes in the 1999 film American Beauty. This performance was a breakthrough for the young girl and opened the way for her to further develop her career.
The actress has also appeared in many other movies and TV shows. From the cult teen comedy American Pie to the mature romantic comedy Taming the Playboy to the award-winning series American Horror Story.
Mena Suvari is honest about her dark past
Suvari was only 19 when she was cast in the Oscar-winning “American Beauty.” She was very young, but also very mature and brave. Years later, the actress decided to say that her life behind the scenes was completely different than it was thought at the time.
In her 2021 autobiography The Great Peace: A Memoir, the actress spoke of her “shattering, heartbreaking coming of age story.” She confessed that she struggled with methamphetamine addiction during the filming of American Beauty to recover from years of sexual abuse. She wrote:
I took drugs to numb the pain. Alcohol. Grass. Coca. Methamphetamine. Acid. Ecstasy. Mushrooms. Mescaline
It all started when the actress was 12 years old and had a traumatic experience of sexual abuse. The perpetrator was a friend of her brother’s, who was three years older than her. He was considered a friend of the family, which is why he felt very comfortable in her home.
One day, he persuaded her to spend time alone with him in the spare room. Later, he began to propose various forms of sex to her, and the girl did not know how to refuse. “No one stopped him from being alone with me in my bedroom,” she wrote in her book. “Nobody warned me,” she added.
Recalling the devastating experience, the actress wrote: “I saw him put on a condom and felt my heart sink into a dark abyss.” After the torturer repeatedly ignored her pleas for him to stop, Suvari gave in and decided to simply wait for him to stop:
I closed my eyes and when I opened them again he had left me and was going to the bathroom to take off the condom
After sexually assaulting her, the boy started spreading the word that she was a “whore” at school. The actress in an interview with “The Guardian” in 2021 said: “It sucked the life out of me. I think it was just a clear confirmation that no one was going to save me, no one was going to do anything for me.”
Years of abuse of various drugs meant that the actress later began to self-harm in order to start dealing with the trauma she experienced. Years later, she assesses it this way: “I think I was desperate. I felt completely helpless and hopeless.”
Suvari later said she “identified” with the role of Angela, who becomes the object of desire for Spacey’s character. “I knew how to play the part because life had trained me to do it.”
I felt unavailable in a million other ways, but I knew how to play this character
Although the period in which she shot “American Beauty” was not good for her, years later she recognizes that working on the film helped her gain some inner peace. “It was all very dark to me at the time, [a film] gave me a lot of respite because I could go to work and be important there.”
Help Ukraine, join the collection. You will pay the money on the website.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
