Actor Jessica Brown Findlay looks back: ‘I was told I would never dance again. It was devastating – but also a gift’
This photo was taken in my garden in Cookham. I’m in my OshKosh dungarees, holding a half-eaten Funny Feet strawberry swirl ice-cream, and the elaborate butterfly face paint must have been from a school summer fete or a birthday party. As for the hair, I’m rocking some proper tight ringlets. I still rock a tight ringlet, to be honest.
The information I have about myself from that age is from other people, my parents, mainly. I know that I was very expressive, with no inhibitions. I was apparently pretty spirited and very goofy in general. As much as I enjoyed making people laugh, I was also insanely well behaved and terrified of getting in trouble. That fear also hasn’t changed. I can’t stand being told off.
I was a very imaginative child and used to spend a lot of time creating stories on my own, disappearing into made-up worlds. I adored dancing around, and ballet was my everything. I started early, aged two and a half. One day I came into nursery and a little girl was there wearing the full ballet regalia: pink tutu, leotard and everything. I thought: “Where do you go to wear that?” Mum says from that moment on I was obsessed.
Quite quickly, ballet became my entire personality. I loved the feeling of making something beautiful; the sensation of floating across the stage was almost mystical. I still have dreams where I’m dancing; it’s as if I am flying. I got a lot of satisfaction from training hard to make the movements look effortless. That duality, striving hard for that effortlessness, was intoxicating and magical. I was besotted with the haunting and romantic ballet stories. As for performing in assemblies or at family events, my passion for ballet was less about an extrovert “look at me” expression and more a form of self-exploration. I took it very seriously.
Eventually, everyone else turned into a teenager and got over ballet, make-believe stories and The Railway Children, but that phase didn’t end for me. I didn’t mind too much that I didn’t have lots of friends, but when I got to secondary school, I finally met some like-minded people.
The tight curls were a bit harder to navigate at age 14 compared with three – it is not easy to flirt with a boy when you’ve got ringlets streaming down your face. But eventually I managed to update my look so it was a bit more grownup and fashionable for the time. At the peak of my teen years I was determined to get a pair of slip-on Kickers. Mum resisted for a while as my feet were narrow and she worried they would fall off. In year 10, I was finally allowed to get some but on one condition: that they last me another two years, until the end of school, as they were so expensive. There was an excruciating few months where I’d have to glue the soles back on.
I was a bit of a grunger as well as loving ballet – I’d hang my pointe shoes off my Quiksilver rucksack and wear really massive DC shoes. I had a bit of “main character syndrome”, in retrospect. But I was very intent on being myself, which I appreciate now. It was quite brave in the 2000s to love Adolphe Adam’s music just as much as the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
As I got older I wasn’t rebellious in the traditional sense – although I did get good at wrapping glass beer bottles in tea towels so they didn’t clink in my rucksack when I went to parties. Instead, my rebellion was aimed inwards. I had quite severe anorexia from the age of 14 until my 20s. I didn’t know where the borders of discipline and ballet training should end, and that mindset manifested itself in a damaging way. I became a vegetarian, then those rules and restrictions became more extreme. Within six months, I became a pretty terrifying size. Everyone knew about it. It was heartbreaking. I sought therapy in my mid-20s, because for many years I looked as if I’d recovered but, mentally, the illness had remained.
Aged 19, I stopped dancing. It was devastating because it was forced on me. I injured my ankle and had three operations on it; the last one went wrong and I was told I would never dance again. That awful experience was also a gift. I ended up studying fine art for four years at Central Saint Martins and launched myself into that world. London in 2006 was exciting; I was running around the city most nights trying to find whatever live music was happening in pubs or clubs in Camden. I adored painting portraits; to observe and interpret someone’s deep inner expression. Somehow the faces I painted were always a little bit sad.
I never did any formal training when it came to acting. But ballet – the ability to feel so much inside, yet say nothing, to let your body speak, and to perform without fear – was very similar to doing theatre. There is something so transient about live theatre and ballet: whatever happens that night will never happen again; that means you just have to throw yourself into the moment. Even when I got my role in Downton Abbey, the only time I felt impostor syndrome was when I’d hear stories from actors about their performances at the National or something. I wished I had an anecdote to share, but I had nothing, no history. After I did my first play, as Electra in an adaptation of The Oresteia, I felt so proud to be an actor. To affirm I was an artist of some kind felt brilliant.
My husband used to say I was an incredibly patient person, but only when it came to everyone else. If something didn’t go to plan, I’d berate myself a lot. The moment that changed was when I became pregnant with our twins. We had experienced losses before, so that pregnancy became an exercise in becoming present, maybe for the first time in my life. I realised that the control that I really wished I could have – the control of keeping a pregnancy going – was out of my hands. There was no magic act that would make my fate better or worse. That transition into motherhood taught me patience with myself, to stop getting hung up. Now, instead of cursing myself in the event of a failure, I take a minute to breathe; try again.
For a huge part of my life, I didn’t think about the girl in this photo. Now she is always there. Not only has becoming an actor meant I get to play, daydream and disappear into an imaginary world for a living, but now I have my own toddlers, the toddler version of me lives on through my sons. We’re becoming best friends; and she’s still there, living right on the surface.
• In the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In the US, help is available at nationaleatingdisorders.org or by calling ANAD’s eating disorders hotline at 800-375-7767. In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder Hope
