On the risks of immersing oneself in a role

Is acting hazardous? Heath Ledger was unquestionably received as a great actor, but his untimely death came under intense scrutiny. Here, Samuel Kampa looks into some of the cognitive research into just why character immersion could compromise mental health. "Fully immersed actors ‘forget themselves’ in the sense that they actively ignore facts about who they are, temporarily subordinating their own thoughts and feelings to those of their character. Actors forget their identities like stoners forget the quadratic formula. The information isn’t gone – just temporarily offline."