Anna Kendrick Opens Up About Playing—and Being—an Emotional-Abuse Survivor

Anna Kendrick stars as a woman in an abusive relationship in Alice, Darling, which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday. But in a recent interview, the actress revealed that she survived a similar experience in her own life.

Kendrick, who plays the title role, opened up to People about how she felt when she first received the screenplay for Alice, Darling.

She explained that her representative sent the script because he knew of Kendrick's recent encounters with "emotional abuse and psychological abuse."

The role resonated with her.

"It felt really distinct in that I had, frankly, seen a lot of movies about abusive or toxic relationships, and it didn't really look like what was happening to me," Kendrick said. "It kind of helped me normalize and minimize what was happening to me, because I thought, 'Well, if I was in an abusive relationship, it would look like that.'"

Alice, Darling is a thriller about a woman who endures emotional manipulation from her boyfriend, Simon, who's played by Charlie Carrick. When Alice takes a vacation with two of her friends, she gradually begins to rediscover herself, but Simon's mind games continue to cast a long shadow.

Kendrick's experience with abuse was still fairly fresh when she first saw the script. She said she agreed to take the role after finding out that production was still "many, many months away."

She further described trying to understand what went on in her abusive relationship as "the hardest task of my adult life."

"My body still believes that it was my fault," said Kendrick, who chose not to name her abusive ex-boyfriend. "So even with this concrete jumping off point for me, to walk out of that relationship knowing that I wasn't crazy, it's incredible the way that recovery has been so challenging."

And while Kendrick might have been nervous about embodying Alice, she described filming the project as "incredibly cathartic" and "therapeutic."

Kendrick has weighed in with her thoughts on toxic masculinity before.

In 2017, amid revelations of systemic abuse toward women in the film industry, Kendrick told Harper's Bazaar that executives from Pitch Perfect had pushed for the cast to wear "sexier" and "tighter" wardrobe. At the Grammy Awards the following year, she wore a white rose on her suit's lapel in solidarity with the #metoo and Time's Up movements.

Newsweek reached out to Kendrick's representative for comment but was told there was "nothing more to add."