Tuppence Middleton on OCD and playing Elizabeth Taylor

Actress Tuppence Middleton says she has "woken up bolt upright successful the mediate of the night" since rehearsals began for her latest play.

The 36-year-old actress, who has obsessive-compulsive upset (OCD), says "anxiety" is to blame.

Middleton's caller play sees her represent the Hollywood prima Elizabeth Taylor successful The Motive and the Cue, other Johnny Flynn arsenic her hubby Richard Burton.

The actress's OCD means 1 of her worries is kissing her co-star.

"Johnny and I person to buss successful this [play] and 1 of my obsessions is being emetophobic, that's fearfulness of vomiting," Middleton tells BBC News.

"And truthful I get preoccupied with, 'oh what if Johnny has norovirus'?"

Middleton developed OCD arsenic a kid and told the BBC astir the hidden and "internal" interaction it has connected her career.

The opening of rehearsals for The Motive and the Cue was peculiarly challenging.

"The archetypal time erstwhile you conscionable everyone, and everyone shakes hands and I'm making a intelligence enactment of whose manus I've shaken and past I person to retrieve portion I'm talking to radical that I request to spell and lavation my hands," she explains.

As good arsenic an aggravated fearfulness of vomiting and a preoccupation with cleanliness and contamination, Middleton told One to One connected BBC Sounds successful 2021 that her OCD besides manifests itself successful obsessive intelligence counting and compulsive checking behaviours.

But now, she says: "You find ways of coping with it arsenic you get older and get utilized to it."

Obsessive compulsive upset affects much than 500,000 radical successful the UK. Sufferers tin acquisition anxious, intrusive thoughts and, similar galore aesculapian conditions, OCD tin get worse if near untreated.

OCD tin beryllium hard to spot arsenic sufferers whitethorn fell their symptoms due to the fact that of feelings and thoughts of guilt oregon shame oregon embarrassment.

There are immoderate communal thoughts oregon behaviours the sufferer whitethorn experience, and whitethorn often cognize are irrational. These tin include:

Middleton has succeeded successful gathering a wide-ranging CV of movie and TV work, astir notably successful subject fiction, including Black Mirror and Sense8, and costume dramas specified arsenic the Downton Abbey movies and War & Peace. She was seen precocious successful the ITV thriller Our House.

But The Motive and the Cue is her archetypal large signifier role. She admits it's "very daunting" playing Elizabeth Taylor, an histrion arsenic celebrated for her idiosyncratic dramas arsenic her nonrecreational career, who was joined 8 times and lived a tumultuous beingness successful the spotlight afloat of scandal, intoxicant and addiction.

In the Motive and the Cue, directed by Sam Mendes and written by Jack Thorne, who besides wrote Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Taylor is recently joined to Burton.

The mates had met connected the acceptable of the movie Cleopatra and embarked connected a passionate affair, portion joined to different people.

They created a sensation wherever they went and became successful galore ways the archetypal "celebrity couple", agelong earlier Brangelina, Bennifer oregon Kimye.

Middleton says it's hard for younger radical to recognize now, astir 60 years later, "just however celebrated they were".

"They were benignant of similar exotic animals," she says, "people wanted to beryllium adjacent to them."

The play is acceptable successful 1964 erstwhile some were astatine the tallness of their fame and Burton played Hamlet successful an experimental accumulation connected Broadway directed by John Gielgud.

"Every azygous night, passim the run," explains Middleton, "there were thousands of radical successful the thoroughfare extracurricular the theatre and the roads were blocked off.

"And that would conscionable ne'er hap now, due to the fact that personage doesn't clasp that aforesaid benignant of pull."

The Motive and the Cue is astatine the National Theatre: Lyttelton from 20 April to 15 July.