It's time to bring in the dancing lobsters: Amanda Bynes is back, four years sober, and ready to return to acting.
The former All That and Amanda Show star opened up about her recent struggles in an interview with Paper Magazine, delving into what led her to retire from acting. Bynes explains that she began abusing Adderall around the time she starred in 2007's Hairspray, mainly because she heard it would help her stay thin. This addiction led her to feel "scatterbrained" and unable to remember her lines in movies like Hall Pass, which she dropped out of.
The last straw, she says, was when she attended a screening of what would end up being her last film, Easy A. "I literally couldn't stand my appearance in that movie and I didn't like my performance," Bynes said. "I was absolutely convinced I needed to stop acting after seeing it." Bynes, who says she previously went into a "deep depression" after not liking the way she looked in She's the Man, says she was high on marijuana during the screening. While she's unsure if this reaction was just a "drug-induced psychosis," it "absolutely changed my perception of things."
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For a while after, Bynes says her life consisted of little more than "getting high, watching TV and tweeting," with those tweets infamously leaving followers baffled. While her erratic behavior caused many to speculate about her mental state, Bynes says substance abuse was the only issue. "It really made me a completely different person," Bynes said of her drug use.
The good news is that Bynes says she has been sober for four years, she's getting her degree at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, and she's ready for a comeback, hoping to dive back into acting with a sense of "excitement and hope for the best."
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