Random Historical Figures Who Had Mental Illnesses or Crippling Phobias (10 items)

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  (#1) Antonin Artaud

  • Dec. at 52 (1896-1948)

  Poet, director, playwright, and actor Antonin Artaud, a key figure in the Surrealist movement, is known for many things, including his electrifying and eccentric performances and his seminal work The Theatre and its Double. But he's equally famous for his insanity, which took on forms that were as insightfully bizarre as they were insightfully tragic. Always passionate and quirky, Artaud didn't actually cross the line into "bonafide insanity" until later. But when his madness began to flower, it came out in full force. He spit on imaginary figures, threatened pedestrians with his "magic cane," and took a trip to Ireland to find the tree-worshipping druids who'd fashioned said walking apparatus.

  Artaud spent his final years in institutions. He once described himself as “a dead man at the side of a living man who is no longer himself,” and once remarked, poignantly, that “blows were the only language in which [he] felt comfortable speaking." His work, however, lives on.
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  (#5) Vivien Leigh

  • Dec. at 54 (1913-1967)

  Vivien Leigh became famous for her brilliant acting ability and her magnificent beauty, but her legendary professionalism often masked her daunting struggle with bipolar disorder.

  Various witnesses state that Leigh's illness initially began manifesting in the 1930s (right around the time of Gone with the Wind), but didn't reach a zenith until the 1950s, right after she won an Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire. She apparently identified deeply with the character of Blanche DuBois, and the role significantly exacerbated her own neurosis.

  According to reports, Leigh's behavior escalated from there; she once stripped off her garments in the middle of a public park, an action that led to a round of electroshock therapy. She won a Tony Award for her role in the Broadway musical Tovarich, but during her last major performance, she suffered another breakdown, forgetting her lines, speeding up the opening number, and attacking her co-star.

  Nevertheless, the chaos of her personal life was likely exacerbated by her fame. She resisted going to a psychiatrist lest paparazzi follow her there. Furthermore, when her husband, legendary actor Laurence Olivier, told playwright Noel Coward that he feared for his wife's sanity, the witty Coward retorted, “Nonsense... if anyone’s having a nervous breakdown, you are.” Truly a nuanced observation, if there ever was one.
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  (#7) Vaslav Nijinsky

  • Dec. at 60 (1890-1950)

  Famed ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky revolutionized dance and choreography with his elaborate, surreal, scandalous, and brilliant performances. But he became increasingly overburdened with responsibilities and demons, and tragically descended into mental illness, giving his last performance at the young age of 28.

  According to sources, Nijinsky's final descent into madness was triggered, at least partially, by the increasing stress of having to manage his own business affairs and bookings - responsibilities that cut deeply into what he truly loved to do, which was dance. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1919, he spent most of the rest of his life in asylums.

  Nijinsky's Diary, which he wrote while institutionalized, contains a wealth of vividly creative descriptions and poignant insights. He feels “blood playing up” in his stomach after eating, muses on the impossibility of dancing before said food has “fully dropped out” of his bowels, speaks of the imagist horrors of black hair dye on white pillowcases, and laments the pervasive spiritual “dryness” of people who have ceased to live passionately.

  Nijinsky himself, however, never lost his passion, even when he was only dancing in his own head.
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  (#8) Nikola Tesla

  • Dec. at 87 (1856-1943)

  Nikola Tesla, the famous electrical engineering genius, created many groundbreaking inventions, but not many know that he also had a rather romantic phobia of pearls, a condition known in less poetic and more clinical terms as oystersaritisphobia. According to sources, Tesla could not bear looking at the gems, or even having them out of sight in the next room: When his secretary once came into his office wearing a pearl necklace, he reportedly sent her back home.

  Other sources claim the pearl aversion was an aesthetic thing rather than a full-blown phobia (or chronic mental illness). But either way, the “pearl” of Tesla's intellect has definitely never stopped shining, or rolling through time to inspire the creation of modern-day addictions like the smartphone.
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  (#9) Zelda Fitzgerald

  • Dec. at 48 (1900-1948)

  Zelda Fitzgerald, the gifted and beautiful wife of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, is one of the world's most famous victims of mental illness. She obsessed over ballet at the very late age (for a ballerina) of 27, and her subsequent lack of success in the endeavor was a major factor in the downward spiral of her mental health.

  She practiced for eight hours a day, and the physical strain, coupled with her unhappiness with Fitzgerald, further exacerbated her alienation from sanity. Later in life, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and resided in various clinics for the remainder of her life.

   
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  (#4) Alfred Hitchcock

  • Dec. at 81 (1899-1980)

  Renowned film director Alfred Hitchcock had an assortment of fears (he was profoundly disturbed by cops, in particular), but not many people know of his deep loathing of eggs. His description of this particular phobia gets deeply visceral:

  That white round thing without any holes... have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its contents of yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red, by comparison. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it. And then I’m frightened of my own movies. I never go to see them. I don’t know how people can bear to watch my movies.

   

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