Caitriona Balfe has revealed she needed therapy after she quit modelling.
The 42-year-old walked for huge fashion houses such as Chanel and Louis Vuitton before quitting her modelling career to become an actress.
In a new interview, the Monaghan native admitted she sought therapy after her self-esteem took a hit while she was working as a model.
Speaking on the podcast The Unimaginable with James Brown, the Belfast star said: “I spent quite a bit of time in therapy in my early 30s when I arrived in LA because that was a time of huge reckoning for myself and trying to figure out how I had got to where I was at.”
“I was starting a whole new thing and knew I didn’t have all of the tools. I think if I hadn’t gone into therapy at that point I don’t know if I would have been able to get through those lean years and look after myself.”
“A lot of people have this perception of models as these stuck up, overly confident young women who are super privileged, but my experience is very very different to that.”
The actress continued: “It is a very lonely business, and it can be very tough on your confidence and your self esteem.”
Caitriona explained that the loneliness she endured from being bullied while she was in school came back to haunt her while she was modelling.
She said: “As a child, being bullied like that, experiencing that kind of loneliness, that’s one thing I really remember strongly, it used to be the thing that filled me with the biggest dread, this idea of loneliness in my future too. ”
“When you feel that as a kid, it can have a really lasting impact on you.”
Caitriona also admitted that being a pale skinned model was hard at the time.
She said: “It was at the height of the Brazilian phenomena. It was all Gisele Bundchen and these Brazilian bombshells that I didn’t look like. At first I did not work a lot as I was pale, pasty Irish.”
“When I was doing it for seven or eight years, I thought, ‘I’ve got to figure my way out of this’, and I was really hungry to get back to acting or to see if it was still something I was passionate about.”
“I was scared if I didn’t try and give it a shot, I would regret it. So after ten years, I left Paris and moved to LA.”
Caitriona got her big break in 2014 after she had quit modelling, when she landed the role of Claire Fraser in the historical Starz series Outlander.
She has earned her three Golden Globe nominations for her role in the hit series.
The actress was also tipped for an Oscar earlier this year for her role in Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Belfast’.
