Lena Dunham is the cover girl for the latest issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, which is on newsstands now. Inside her interview with the mag the ‘Girls’ star opens up about her lifelong struggles with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, her childhood fear of sex, her reaction to criticisms about the show’s lack of diversity – and much more.
Check out some highlights from her interview below:
On relating to the audience of her hit HBO series, Girls: “It’s funny to me that i’m writing a show considered to be the voice of twenty-something people. Because I don’t feel that connected to it all the time.”
On her OCD and hypochondriac phase: “AIDS, jaundice, you name it, I had it. I’d count eight times… I’d look on both sides of me eight times, I’d make sure nobody was following me down the street, I touched different parts of my bed before I went to sleep, I’d imagine a murder, and I’d imagine the same murder eight times.”
On her negative side effects from various medications: “I was exhausted all the time, nights sweats. I was pretty fat in high school if I look at it, because it just slows down your metabolism. My mom would always be like, ‘I think you’re having a lot of side effects,’ and I’d be like, ‘You’re such a b****; you just want me to be skinny!’ and my mom was like, ‘No, you’re just sleeping all the time and sweaty.'”
On her advice for the internet: “Don’t ever Google a drug. Because it’s all psychos being like, ‘This blinded me, it killed my husband.’ Once I flushed all my [medication] down the toilet, because I was so scared by what I read. But if I feel I’m in the Tower of Terror, a little piece will just let me breathe.”