The Hangover Star Had Anxiety After Film’s Success

While Ed Helms was already a well-known figure thanks to The Office and The Daily Show, the actor’s fame reached a new level thanks to The Hangover. Helms starred in the 2009 film alongside Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis and the film became wildly popular — it was highest grossing R-rated comedy at the domestic box office that year — and launched a trilogy as well. But for Helms, it also gave him a great deal of anxiety about his career after it unleashed what he called “a tornado of fame.”

“It was a tornado of fame and a lot of buffeting,” Helms said in a recent episode of the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast (via Cinemablend). “I really was reeling a lot of the time, like in the aftermath of The Hangover … I was getting scripts for all these different kinds of projects. Like what do I do? I dunno. I was kind of spinning out and panicking about different things. Like, well, what kind of career do you want?”

“I will say one of the craziest things about a massive jump into fame like that, and what I think people who have never dealt with that or been close to it just can’t understand is the just total loss of control of your environment,” he added.

Released in 2009, The Hangover was an overnight phenomenon, quickly becoming not just an instant favorite with its target audience, but with critics as well. The film also performed very well at the box office, earning more than $469 million at the global box office on a budget of $35 million. The Hangover Part II was released two years later, and a third film arrived in 2013. Helms starred in all three and explained that he relied on Cooper and Galifianakis for support throughout.

“If it wasn’t for those guys, I don’t think I would’ve stayed sane,” he said. “But we all had each other to kind of be like, you know, I don’t know, just to commiserate and measure ourselves… and I think we kept each other from drifting too far. And being too unprofessional.”

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