Selena Gomez has been open about her battle with anxiety and depression over the past six years – and she is now hoping her candid new documentary will help other people speak out.
Explaining why she decided to lay bare her struggles and tumultuous relationship with fame in Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, the singer says she wanted to educate young people about the importance of prioritising their mental health.
Selena, 30, says: "I think someone actually asked me if I felt like I did too much. And I'm not going to lie, maybe there were a few moments that were scary to offer up. But at the same time, if you take anything away from this, I hope people understand my purpose here is supposed to be connection.
"I used myself as a sacrifice in order for people to have the hard conversations. But I'm also going to crawl in a hole now for a few months, so nobody sees me for a while. I did too much."
Selena started her journey to fame aged seven and her TV career took off when she appeared in children's series Barney & Friends aged 10. In 2007, when she was 15, she was given a starring role on the Disney Channel series Wizards Of Waverly Place, and the following year she signed a deal with Hollywood Records.
Working under that record label, Selena released three albums with her former band, Selena Gomez & The Scene, which all reached the Top 10 of the US Billboard 200. In late 2010, she began dating pop star Justin Bieber, who was 16 at the time. Their on/off romance continued for eight years.
In 2013, her profile rocketed with the release of her debut solo album, Stars Dance. Her second album, Revival, debuted at No1 in the US in 2015.
But in 2016, fame began to take its toll on Selena's health. After 55 shows on her Revival tour, the star – who was diagnosed with auto-immune disease lupus in 2014 – cancelled the remainder of the gigs to focus on her mental health. In a statement released at the time, she said she was suffering from panic attacks and depression.
In the summer of 2017, complications from lupus led to her getting a kidney transplant from her good friend, actress Francia Raisa.
The following year, in May 2018, Selena split from Justin for good, with rumours suggesting the relationship had been "unhealthy" for a while.
Five months later, the singer was admitted to a psychiatric hospital – and she later revealed she had an episode of psychosis during this time.
In 2020, Selena revealed she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
The footage in the new documentary, which was directed by Alek Keshishian – who also directed Madonna's 1991 documentary, Truth Or Dare – comes from two weeks of filming during Selena's ill-fated Revival tour.
Recently Alek revealed that when he showed Selena the footage he had shot, including a backstage meltdown during rehearsals where she cries and says, "It sucks. It looks so bad," she was shocked.
He said: "She was like, ‘Oh my God! I don't want the world to see me breaking down crying like that.'"
But he added that she started to feel like there could be a way her story could help. He said: "That's her Achilles heel. She wants to help others."
Speaking at AFI Fest in Los Angeles, where the film premiered, Selena explained she wants the documentary to help people open up to friends and family.
She said: "I hope it starts with a conversation where people immediately start asking questions about things they've felt. The pandemic was a time of isolation and people were experiencing depression for the first time, anxiety.
"I feel like this is the right moment to release something like this because a lot of people would ask, 'Well, what do I do? How do I get help?' And I just try my hardest to show them that you don't have to stop. You can keep going."
She added: "I hope people take away that it's OK to feel not good enough. It's OK to feel that you're complicated and you're complex. It's just about having a healthier relationship with how you talk to yourself, how you seek help, how you talk to other people.
"If just one person is impacted by this film, I would consider myself the luckiest girl."
Selena decided to work with Alek as she felt comfortable sharing her life with him. She explained: "I watched Truth Or Dare. Well, prior to that I had met Alek through my manager. He also directed a music video of mine and we decided to maybe attempt to do a tour documentary.
"We soon realised there was much more going on than just the tour, that I eventually ended up cancelling. He came into my life in these moments that were beautiful, complicated and tragic, and I felt comfortable with just sharing what I was walking through with Alek."
Just before the documentary debuted on 4 November, Selena released its soundtrack.
Speaking about penning a song especially for the documentary, Selena said: "It was interesting because it was the first time I allowed anyone to have my journals. From that stemmed conversations, including, 'Maybe we try and do... What's the song for the movie? How do we do that?'
"And we were able to create My Mind & Me. And I feel like it was a perfect example of what I walked through, and it was beautiful. Then, we ended up naming the film that."
Now, Selena is starring in Hulu's Only Murders In The Building -– in which her character Mabel investigates a neighbour's mysterious death – and she says it has "changed [her] life".
So what would be her advice to anyone planning on being a global superstar?
"I don't know who I am to give advice," she said. "All I would ever want anyone to know is that they're exactly enough the way they are."
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