Amanda Seyfried says she suffers panic attacks that ‘feel like life or death’

Seyfried is up for the Best Actress Oscar for her role in ‘Mank’

Amanda Seyfried has opened up about suffering panic attacks that feel “like life or death”.

The actor spoke to the Today show on Sunday in the lead-up to this year’s Oscars, which will take place on 25 April. She’s nominated for Best Supporting Actress (alongside Maria Bakalova, Glenn Close, Olivia Colman, and Youn Yuh-jung) for her portrayal of Marion Davies in David Fincher’s Mank.

“You seem so comfortable wherever you are, doing what you do, so easy in your own skin, but you’ve had this long struggle with anxiety, haven’t you?” host Willie Geist asked her.

“Yes,” Seyfried responded. “It feels like life or death. That’s what a panic attack is, really. Your body goes into fight or flight. The endorphin rush and the dump that happens after the panic attack is so extraordinary. You just feel so relieved, and your body is kind of recovered, in a way. It’s so bizarre, because it’s physiological, but it starts in your head.”

The condition, she added, “never goes away”.

Back in 2016, Seyfried shared more thoughts about the perception of mental health in an interview with the magazine Allure.

“A mental illness is a thing that people cast in a different category [from other illnesses], but I don’t think it is,” she told the publication at the time.

“It should be taken as seriously as anything else. You don’t see the mental illness: It’s not a mass; it’s not a cyst. But it’s there. Why do you need to prove it? If you can treat it, you treat it.”