Tuppence Middleton feels “really selfish as a parent with OCD” because she struggles to cope when her daughter is ill.
Tuppence Middleton has had OCD for 30 years
The ‘Downton Abbey’ star has been battling obsessive-compulsive disorder – which causes uncontrollable repetitive behaviours and thoughts – for three decades, and she feels a “tremendous amount of guilt” at the measures she takes to get close to her and partner Mans Marlind’s two-year-old child when offering her comfort when she’s unwell, particularly because she doesn’t want to pass her rituals on to the youngster.
She told MailOnline: “You feel really selfish as a parent with OCD because you want to be there and be able to cuddle them and have their face near you whenever they’re ill …
“I would be pretty panicky to deal with my child’s sick, and I would use all of those things that I had – the rubber gloves, the bleach and the masks.
“There’s a tremendous amount of guilt doing that, however, because I don’t want to pass on those behaviours to her.
“But at the same time, that’s your biggest fear to be that close to someone so it’s really complicated as a thought process.”
The 38-year-old actress also revealed she got “really anxious” when she had an on-screen love interest and would repeatedly question the actors she had to kiss to make sure they were not ill.
She admitted: “I asked them, even if they looked tired and pale, because it was five in the morning when we were filming, and I was like, ‘Do you feel okay? How do you feel? Is it in your stomach?’
“But now I play less of those love interest roles so it’s less of a problem.”
However, the ‘Fisherman’s Friends’ actress now feels comfortable telling co-stars about “this particular anxiety”.
She said: “But now I feel more able to speak to my co-star and say, I have this particular anxiety and if at any point you or anyone in your family, someone that you are close to, gets a vomiting bug you have to tell me, please, because I have this huge anxiety around it.
“That was really difficult and I found that job quite anxiety-inducing.”
