Paul Mescal has revealed he is happier since he decided to quit social media.
The Normal People star had over a million followers on Instagram when he deactivated his account on the platform last year.
The BAFTA-winning actor shot to global fame with his first TV role in Normal People and followed it up with his first film role in The Lost Daughter, which was nominated for a series of Oscars.
The actor opened up about his extraordinary rise to success to Variety at the Cannes Film Festival where his films Aftersun and God’s Creatures have premiered to critical acclaim.
He explained his decision to pull himself off of Instagram in 2021, opting to stay off of social media.
“I just think it’s a scary place sometimes,” he said.
“For the work that I want to do, I think it’s important to be a little less visible so that you can disappear in a little bit, so that they can’t see you essentially in your work all the time.
“They’re seeing you on social media. I just feel happier without it. I feel a little bit more invisible and just less pressured around the work.”
In Aftersun, he played a young father on holiday at a resort in Turkey with his 11-year-old daughter.
He said he unintentionally drew from his own father when playing his role but when asked what sort of roles he wants to take on in the future, Mescal joked, “I feel like I need to not do a dad for a little while, being 26”.
In conversation with Aftersun writer and director Charlotte Wells at the Variety Studio at Cannes, he said he would “do anything if I really like the script”
He added: “There’s nothing that I’m yearning to do. But at the minute I read it, I’ll know in my head.”
Mescal’s career has been on a skywards trajectory since his debut screen performance in Normal People, which became a global hit during lockdown.
Paul’s work as a lovelorn student on Normal People alongside co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones also won him a nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie at the 2020 Primetime Emmy Awards.
He has recently finished filming his latest movie, Foe, in Australia opposite Saoirse Ronan in a dream Irish pairing.
Foe, based on a novel by Iain Reid, is set slightly in the future, after severe climate change has ruined farmland.
It centred around a farmer and his wife, played by Ronan and Mescal, who are struggling on one of the last remaining farms until a knock on the door by a mysterious stranger changes things The 26-year-old Kildare star has already filmed the movie Carmen Down Under in 2021. He played the male lead in the modern-day reimagining of one of the world’s most celebrated operas.
Mescal starred opposite Vida actress, Melissa Barrera, who played the titular role of Carmen.
Following Carmen, he flew to Greece to join Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, and fellow Irish actor Jessie Buckley on location on the set of The Lost Daughter.
The directorial debut from Maggie Gyllenhaal generated Oscar buzz for the female leads, Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman.
The Kildare star played an Irish student working as a lifeguard on an idyllic Greek beach, who gets caught up in the holiday drama.
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