“Bonnie and Clyde” star Faye Dunaway opens up about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder in a new HBO documentary about her life, “Faye.”
“I worked with a group of doctors who analyzed my behavior, who gave me prescriptions for pills they thought would be good for me. And that helped,” the star, 83, says in the movie. “So I am quieter. But throughout my career, people know there were tough times.”
The star’s behavior has been legendary in Hollywood, and she gained a reputation for being “difficult,”
Fellow icon Bette Davis once told Johnny Carson of working with Dunaway that she was “impossible” and “uncooperative.”
“I don’t mean to make an excuse about it, I am still responsible for my actions,” she continues in the film. “But this is what I came to understand, was the reason for them. It’s something you need to be aware of, you need to try to do the right thing to take care of it.”
The film — directed by Laurent Bouzereau — also features interviews with stars including Sharon Stone and Mickey Rourke, and director James Gray.
The film covers the Hollywood icon’s childhood to her career starring in acclaimed hits like “Chinatown” and “Network,” and cult classic “Mommy Dearest.”
Dunaway says in the new documentary of her mental health: “It’s a sensitivity and it’s something that is just a part of my makeup… Thank God there is medication and there are studies, and there are doctors who deal with this and I’ve been able to benefit from that. Medication is crucial and without it, you fall back into what is there psychologically and biologically.”
Her son, Liam Dunaway O’Neill, 43, appears in the doc, saying, “If she wasn’t in so much pain, would she have been that good? You have to take the good with the bad, that’s just life.”
He says of his mother, that she “started out as a normal person wanting to be famous, and ended up as a famous person wanting to be normal.”
Dunaway made her first public appearance in four years at Cannes when she walked the red carpet at the premiere of “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” starring Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy.
