• Penn Badgley feels that Blake Lively “saved” him from harming himself.
• Penn said that celebrity and achievement came at a high cost.
• The actor remembered being “very unhappy” in his twenties.

The actor, 36, co-starred with Blake in the TV drama “Gossip Girl” from 2007 to 2012. He acknowledges that their friendship saved him from a “dark undercurrent” that was forming in his life.

Penn – who dated Blake between 2007 and 2010 – explained: “To be honest, I never struggled with substance. Blake didn’t drink, and I think our relationship in some ways saved me from forcing myself to go down that road.”

Penn said that celebrity and achievement came at a high cost, despite this.

The actor remembered being “very unhappy” in his twenties.

He told Variety magazine: “Like anybody who experiences some degree of fame and wealth, I was presented with the universal truth that not only does it not make your life better or easier, it actually can greatly complicate things, and make you quite unhappy.”

Penn can still vividly remember feeling isolated and having a lack of trust in other people.

The actor said: “I was never anything that I would define as suicidal at all, but I was certainly in a despair.

“It had to do with ‘Do I matter? Do I matter? Does anything matter?’ These questions do inform how we feel. The answer that I came upon was ‘Yes.’ I think we all have to come to that.

“I don’t know how you could come to ‘No’ and be happy, so we all have to come to that ‘Yes’ somehow. Probably repeatedly.”

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