Evangeline Lilly has struggled with mental health issues for years, and in a recent interview with DigitalSpy, the "Lost" and "The Hobbit" star credited an organic diet to helping ease her clinical depression.
"I have battled clinical depression and have come out of the other side," she said. "I've been free of it for many years now. "Finding the place in my own mind and heart to win that battle without using medication, finding the place within myself where I could be alive again, that was one of the biggest challenges I've faced."
While clinical depression is a complex mental illness and there is no one fix for everyone, Lilly explained that while filming "Lost" in Hawaii, "going from eating whatever to eating primarily organic food" sparked major changes in her.
"I was astounded what a difference that [diet] made. After about a year or two years, I started to feel something physically lift out of my brain, and I believe it was all the chemicals I was probably ingesting [before]," she told DigitalSpy. "I would rather pretend to be happy than allow myself to be miserable. It's sort of the idea of 'fake it till you make it'. Put on a smile until you believe your own smile. That's a big part of it."
Evangeline Lilly's latest film role, "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," has received mostly positive responses from fans and critics so far, and premieres in theaters worldwide tomorrow, Dec. 13.
