Latest news with #DianeKruger
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Variety.com Ranks as Top Entertainment Business News Site for Three Years in a Row
has ranked as the top entertainment business news site for 36 consecutive months. The online home of the weekly entertainment business magazine Variety has claimed the No. 1 spot every month so far this year through May. The website has held the top position since June 2022. More from Variety Variety's 'Actors on Actors' Season 22 Breaks Emmys Season Franchise Record With Nearly 100 Million Social Video Views Paul Mescal, Diane Kruger and More Toast to Rising Talent at Variety and Golden Globes' Cannes Breakthrough Artist Party Variety Wins Four 2025 Webby Awards, Including for Social Presence and Actors on Actors Series Variety reached a larger digital audience than consumer news publications Vanity Fair and Entertainment Weekly for the past three years, according to unique visitor data from Comscore. Variety's 2025 traffic to date has also surpassed all other trade news sites, making it the most-read publication in its category. 'This is a tremendous winning streak,' said Ramin Setoodeh and Cynthia Littleton, Variety's co-Editors-in-Chief. 'We are so proud of our newsroom for producing the best journalism — a wide range of stories that includes breaking news, industry scoops, longform profiles, criticism and franchises such as Power of Women and Actors on Actors. With our award-winning print magazine, aggressive social media strategy and hit video series, Variety has become the largest multi-platform publication of its kind.' Variety's 2025 coverage has featured blockbuster stories, including Noah Wyle's return to medical dramas with 'The Pitt'; Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood addressing 'White Lotus' feud rumors; a father-son interview with Arnold and Patrick Schwarzenegger as part of Variety's 'Actors on Actors'; and a conversation between Apple CEO Tim Cook and Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton about teaming up for 'F1 the Movie,' starring Brad Pitt. Variety also landed groundbreaking numbers for the 22nd season of Variety's 'Actors on Actors' series across its social media channels. The latest season of 'Actors on Actors' — featuring Parker Posey, Kathryn Hahn, Colin Farrell, Amanda Seyfried, Diego Luna, Dave Chapelle, the Schwarzeneggers and more 2025 Emmy contenders — generated over 40.9 million views on TikTok. On YouTube, Season 22 has racked up more than 2.8 million views. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts? 25 Hollywood Legends Who Deserve an Honorary Oscar
ABC News
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Little Disasters: S1 Episode 1
Skip to main content Go back to home page Home Live TV Shows Movies ABC News ABC Kids Categories Mystery Drama Relationships When Jess takes her baby to hospital with an unexplained head injury, her close friend, A&E doctor Liz, makes the excruciating decision to call social services, igniting an explosive chain of events. New series starts Sunday 15 June at 9pm on ABC iview and ABC TV. Diane Kruger, Jo Joyner, Ben Bailey Smith, Shelley Conn, Emily Taaffe, JJ Feild, Stephen Campbell Moore, Patrick Baladi
Daily Mirror
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
'I stood near the road terrified I'd push my baby into the path of traffic'
A mum has opened up about her battles with perinatal OCD after welcoming her second child, sharing the impact this had on her, and how she cured the intrusive thoughts in her head After giving birth to her newborn, a mum of two battled with intrusive thoughts that left her "terrified". Now, she's shed light on the true toll perinatal obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can take. Sarah Vaughan has opened up about the mental health difficulties she endured after welcoming her second child, which saw her head swirling with unwelcome thoughts, images and ideas. Thoughts of harming her children, dropping them, or even pushing her buggy into oncoming traffic were just some of the battles she faced. And she's far from the only mother who has had to contend with this. Author and journalist Sarah poured her experiences of living with perinatal OCD into her thought-provoking novel Little Disasters. The book has now also been made into a six-part series. The protagonist, Jessica, played by Diane Kruger, is based loosely on Sarah's personal experiences. While not as severe as her book character's story, Sarah's struggle was still a serious one. "I knew I wasn't depressed, and I gave every impression of being a competent mother, taking my children to baby groups, cooking everything from scratch and striving to be a domestic goddess. I clearly didn't resemble Diane Kruger, whose character experiences perinatal OCD to a far more extreme degree than me, but I washed my hair and wore mascara every day. I was hardly going to tell a health visitor that I'd stood at the side of the road with my buggy, terrified to cross for fear of pushing it into an oncoming car," she told Sunday Times. Perinatal OCD is characterised by these thoughts, but they usually stop due to fear of harming the baby. Dropping a baby is a 'typical' intrusive thought people can have. Having a fear of germs is also a common OCD form, as well as rituals and compulsive behaviours. Sarah continued: "When I started writing Little Disasters in 2017, perinatal (then maternal) OCD wasn't something I'd ever read about. Yet I knew it existed. Though I was never diagnosed, I experienced it mildly after having my second baby, when a perfect storm of circumstances — a difficult pregnancy in which I was unable to walk, chronic pain, giving up the job that had validated me, a move 50 miles away at 30 weeks pregnant, and my subsequent social isolation — meant I experienced intrusive thoughts about my baby son and tiny daughter being harmed." She recalled how these thoughts and behaviours can cause "considerable distress" even though mothers may feel "split" and know deep down it isn't a reality. Consultant perinatal psychiatrist Dr Maddalena Miele pointed out that these are very "intrusive, ego-dystonic thoughts". Dr Miele said: "They can be very graphic and very intense, and although you rationally know you're not doing this [unlike with psychosis, where women believe the thoughts are true] it is very anxiety provoking," and said they are very different from "feeling worries" new parents may have. Perinatal OCD affects two to nine per cent of women, and there is no single reason it can happen. Dr Miele said there could be a "culmination of risk factors" that could lead to it, and the psychiatrist at St Mary's Hospital said being a perfectionist "predisposes you" as does having OCD previously, or having family members who have suffered from OCD. Other factors could be having a sick baby, a complicated pregnancy, or a traumatic birth. While social isolation could also play a part in the intense feelings. However, it can be treated; some cases may resolve themselves, while some may need psychological intervention such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and practical measures such as delegating childcare. In Sarah's case, she had four CBT sessions, and also found that exercising, sleeping better and being honest with her partner all helped her mindset change, as well as putting her feelings into her fictional writing.
Times
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Sarah Vaughan: ‘I feared I'd push my baby into the path of traffic'
T he stairs of my Edwardian rented house are steep and the drop is sheer. The tiles at the bottom, hard and unforgiving. My ten-month-old son squirms in my arms and, as I sway at the top of them, I see myself dropping him, his tender head smashing on alternate steps as he bounces down. I'm sleep deprived, in chronic pain, and at that moment the descent seems impossible: even holding the banister, I can't force myself to take a step and, as I hesitate, the incline sharpens. But my inquisitive three-year-old is in the kitchen where there's a kettle and knives. Gingerly, I sit on my bottom, and with my baby clutched to me with my right hand, put my left on the banister, then twist so that he's safe against the stairwell while I manoeuvre backwards. As I've taught my eldest to come down the stairs safely, so I inch my way down, shaking as I do so — 10 steps, 11, 12, 13, 14 … Fast forward 16 years and I'm on a film set in Budapest, walking up a set of stairs down which the ethereally beautiful Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds, Troy) will imagine dropping a two-week-old baby. The exterior of this house overlooks Richmond Green, and all the other house interiors are in leafy parts of southwest London, but due to the demands of production, including the fact that the stairs are surrounded by scaffolding from which bright lights can be directed, the stairs, the bedrooms and the kitchen are being filmed here. Kruger, with whom I've just been chatting in her trailer, has already filmed a scene in which these stairs appear to tip and sway, and a second in which she unpeels her socks for fear of slipping, then, with the baby clutched to her chest, shuffles down on her bottom. That scene will open episode five of Little Disasters, a six-part TV series that dropped on Paramount+ last week. When I watch the edits, back in my study, months later, I begin to cry. It's perhaps not surprising, given that the show is based on my 2020 psychological thriller of the same name about the darkest reaches of motherhood. Kruger plays Jess, the seemingly perfect mother among a quartet of women who meet at an antenatal class and, despite having little in common but their due dates, remain friends for ten years. But perfection is an illusion, as every parent knows and every psychological thriller reveals, and here it rapidly starts to crumble when Jess turns up at A&E with a baby with a bang to the back of her head and a story that doesn't add up. When police and social services are called in, Jess's evasiveness intensifies along with her shame. Through Liz (Jo Joyner, The Wives, Shakespeare & Hathaway), the harried paediatrician and Jess's one-time friend, we come to understand that Jess's perfectionism and overprotectiveness mask an anxiety disorder triggered by the traumatic birth of her third baby, Betsey: perinatal obsessive compulsive disorder (or OCD). In what felt to me like an original set-up for a psychological thriller, Jess is so confounded by her vivid intrusive thoughts of deliberately harming Betsey, she effectively gaslights herself. When I started writing Little Disasters in 2017, perinatal (then maternal) OCD wasn't something I'd ever read about. Yet I knew it existed. Though I was never diagnosed, I experienced it mildly after having my second baby, when a perfect storm of circumstances — a difficult pregnancy in which I was unable to walk, chronic pain, giving up the job that had validated me, a move 50 miles away at 30 weeks pregnant, and my subsequent social isolation — meant I experienced intrusive thoughts about my baby son and tiny daughter being harmed. • Parental guilt: the topic mothers often want to talk to me about My disproportionate sense of risk had been heightened by my previous job as a news reporter on The Guardian, where I'd covered the abduction and murder of Sarah Payne, and subsequent trial of Roy Whiting, and the Soham murders. I knew all about little girls being snatched from country lanes as they raced out of sight — something my three-year-old loved to do on her scooter — because that had happened to five-year-old Sarah; I knew little girls disappeared in sleepy Cambridgeshire towns, because for 11 days I'd been based in Soham covering the disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman; and I knew children disappeared from bedrooms while abroad on holiday, something that might happen if we left a window open, because, when my daughter was two and I was four months pregnant with her brother, Madeleine McCann vanished. The cast of Little Disasters OUGHCUT/PARAMOUNT GLOBAL. PHOTOGRAPHER: MATT TOWERS As with OCD in the wider population, perinatal OCD is characterised by recurrent unwelcome thoughts, images and ideas — but here they usually revolve around fear of harm to the baby. Dropping the baby is such a typical intrusive thought that a key psychiatric textbook takes this as its title, but Jess sees herself pushing Betsey's buggy into traffic, or smothering her, or a kettle boiling over, or knives spinning from a knife block and falling on her, or chemicals contaminating a bottle of breastmilk that she's pumped. Fear of germs is common and, as with regular OCD, rituals or compulsive behaviours become a means of managing these perceived dangers. As well as her idiosyncratic approach to going downstairs, Jess hides away the knives, toasters and kettle, spins the rings on her finger, and cleans rigorously — the last initially misinterpreted as a perfectionist desire for an immaculate home. • I had postpartum insomnia — here's how I cured it Such thoughts and behaviours can cause considerable distress, even though the mother may feel 'split' and understand this isn't happening in reality. 'These are very intrusive, ego-dystonic thoughts,' explains the consultant perinatal psychiatrist Dr Maddalena Miele, who points out that these are very different from the fleeting worries new parents habitually experience. 'They can be very graphic and very intense, and although you rationally know you're not doing this [unlike with psychosis, where women believe the thoughts are true] it is very anxiety provoking.' Thankfully we're becoming more aware of the condition. When I researched my thriller, only 1-2 per cent of mothers were understood to experience perinatal OCD (the same prevalence as OCD in the general population), compared with 10 per cent of mothers with postnatal depression. But better-trained health professionals and a wider understanding of maternal mental health has led to far greater recognition. We now know that perinatal OCD affects 2-9 per cent of women antenatally and 2-16 per cent postnatally, according to a raft of recent studies (the different figures are due to the different criteria applied, from clinical criteria to self-reporting). So what prompts it? There is no single cause, but a culmination of risk factors, says Miele, an honorary consultant psychiatrist at St Mary's Hospital, London. Being a perfectionist predisposes you, as does having OCD previously or, given that there's a genetic component, having family members who have suffered from OCD. A precipitating factor would be a sick baby, a complicated pregnancy, or a traumatic birth. A consultant obstetrician once told me that 'birth is the most dangerous day of a baby's life'. One in three first-time births require assisted delivery (ventouse or forceps) in the UK, and 23 per cent of all births here are by emergency caesarean section, and yet expectant mothers aren't necessarily clear about these risks and, in my case, have unrealistic expectations. Jess, who successfully has a home birth with a doula for her first baby, is unprepared for the trauma of her third delivery in which Betsey is stuck and she requires a blood transfusion after a massive post-partum haemorrhage. The sense of an extreme loss of control, and the perceived failure of her body, triggers her perinatal OCD. And then there are the perpetuating factors, such as social isolation. If you're a perfectionist, used to excelling in your career or at home, admitting to struggling when confronted with something that's supposed to be as natural as motherhood seems impossible. Those suffering tend to be highly skilled at appearing to cope. I knew I wasn't depressed, and I gave every impression of being a competent mother, taking my children to baby groups, cooking everything from scratch and striving to be a domestic goddess. I clearly didn't resemble Diane Kruger, whose character experiences perinatal OCD to a far more extreme degree than me, but I washed my hair and wore mascara every day. I was hardly going to tell a health visitor that I'd stood at the side of the road with my buggy, terrified to cross for fear of pushing it into an oncoming car. • Read more parenting advice, interviews, real-life stories and opinion If perfectionism predisposes mothers to perinatal OCD, then it also exacerbates the problem. 'The baby's not an iPad,' says Miele, who practises at the Portland Hospital. 'You have to let things go and accept imperfections; accept uncertainty. Very driven high-achievers want to fix things; to use the rational, cognitive part of the brain, but you need to allow the limbic system to take over. We come to motherhood with preconceived ideas, but we need a more fluid approach. 'People who are perfectionist have overcompensatory mechanisms. When things go wrong, they do more of the same. And although that coping strategy might work in a work environment — and make you desirable as an employee — it's very risky in motherhood. It prevents you taking a rest. Every bit of spare time you'll be using to try to clean the house or being productive. You get run down. Sometimes you need to leave the dirty cups in the sink!' The good news is that perinatal OCD can be treated. While some mild cases may resolve spontaneously, mild and moderate cases should be treated with evidence-based psychological intervention such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and practical measures such as delegating childcare. 'If you're running around with three young children and an absent partner, it's not easy to spend the time required to do CBT,' Miele says. In more severe cases, medication is required, ideally in addition to therapy. The most severe can lead to admission to mother and baby units, but this is rare. In my case, I had four CBT sessions on the NHS after a perceptive GP asked how I was doing. I see my experience as something discrete, that happened postnatally: I have never experienced OCD since. Swimming once a week, sleeping more, beginning to make friends, being honest with my partner, who was obviously aware I was highly anxious, and growing physically stronger all helped, as did writing — this time fiction. As someone used to gaining validation through newspaper bylines, I gained a sense of myself that was distinct from being a mother, again. A final thing that strongly contributed to my recovery was the knowledge that perinatal OCD is a form of vigilance and that, as Liz stresses in Little Disasters, there has never been an instance of a mother with perinatal OCD harming her baby — a line we were keen to include in the scripts. 'There's an evolutionary basis to these thoughts,' Miele says. 'As a mammal you have to be vigilant. Motherhood comes with a natural motivation of safety mechanisms. Having an overprotective thought means that we love the baby and want to protect it but sometimes that mechanism goes awry because of the illness of OCD. 'These thoughts aren't a measure of parental malevolence. They come from a place of love.' Little Disasters streams on Paramount + on May 22. The original thriller is published by Simon & Schuster Page 2
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Amrum' Review: Diane Kruger in Fatih Akin's Sentimental Drama Set During the Last Days of Nazi Germany
In Amrum, Fatih Akin stages a sentimental conversation between himself and his mentor, the German director Hark Bohm. This project, which premiered at Cannes outside the main competition, was born of a collaboration between the two filmmakers: Bohm wrote the screenplay, which is based on memories of his youth in the waning days of World War II, and Akin directed (as well as helped edit the script). Indeed, one of the film's intertitles calls Amrum a 'Hark Bohm film by Fatih Akin.' That's a useful note, because it announces Amrum as atypical of the Turkish-German filmmaker's usual offerings. It doesn't have the thriller textures of In the Fade or the grittiness of Head-On. With its focus on the experiences of a young boy, Amrum most closely aligns with Akin's 2016 coming-of-age drama Goodbye Berlin. More from The Hollywood Reporter Cannes Gives Warm Welcome to Dardennes and 'Young Mother's Home' 'Resurrection' Review: Director Bi Gan's Beguiling, Beautifully Realized Journey Through the Life, Death and Possible Rebirth of Cinema 'Woman and Child' Review: An Unwieldy Iranian Melodrama Sustained by Great Performances and a Gifted Young Director But even that film, with its surreal elements, had a touch more edge. Amrum lives in the category of movies that confront the cruelty of Nazism through the perspective of children. It's less cloying than The Boy in the Striped Pajamas but more earnest than JoJo Rabbit. The film stars returning Akin collaborator Diane Kruger as an anti-fascist farmer on the titular island off the German coast, and features a strong turn from Jasper Ole Billerbeck as protagonist Nanning. We meet Nanning in the summer of 1945, working alongside his friend Hermann (Klan Koppke) on a farm run by Tessa (Kruger). As they till the land, a horse and buggy filled with people pulls up and a brief conversation between Tessa and the driver reveals that those in the wagon are Russian-born German refugees who have been sent from Berlin. Tessa, fed up with the war and keenly aware of diminishing resources within this tight-knit community, denigrates the Nazi cause and hopes for an end to it all. Ignorant to the implication of Tessa's statement, Nanning alludes to it later at dinner with his mother Hille (Laura Tonke) and his aunt Ena (Lisa Hagmeister). He asks if his father will be home soon because the war is almost over. Hille, a fierce Nazi loyalist, is appalled by the question and the next day she reports Tessa to the Nazi authorities. Nanning loses his job and is labeled a rat by his peers. Akin uses this early moment to establish the tension between Amrum's long-time, working-class residents and the Nazis transplanted there because of the war. Nanning, who is a member of the Hitler Youth corp and whose father plays a critical role within the Nazi party, doesn't question how he's seen by others until his mother reports Tessa to the authorities. But still, he remains loyal to her. The drama in Amrum kicks off when Hille, pregnant with her fourth child, becomes depressed by Hitler's diminishing influence. At her lowest point, she off-handedly wishes for white bread, butter and honey, and Nanning, a child who wants his mother to feel better, takes it as a mandate. He sets off on a series of quests to find these rare goods. His adventures take him across the island, where he interacts with an assortment of people with different political views. He also comes to understand more about his family's personal history and the depth of his mother and father's cruelty. Billerbeck's performance is Amrum's emotional engine. The actor channels Nanning's initial naïveté through sorrowful eyes that grow more steely as his adventures harden him to harsh realities. He captures the adolescent desire to fit in and balances that well with the grief that comes from realizing your parents are not who you thought they were. Kruger's role in Amrum is minor but affecting. She plays Tessa, a potato farmer, as a kind of counterpart to Hille. Unlike Nanning's mother, Tessa doesn't blindly support the Nazis and doesn't see Hitler as the path to Germany's salvation. There's a groundedness to her character, who embodies a rare kind of moral clarity. Amrum is hardly a piece of fascist apologia nor does it try to build a sympathetic portrait of Nazis. Akin uses a child's perspective to wrestle with a nation's conception of itself in the waning days of brutality. Still, one does wonder if the message about the Third Reich's rotten core gets lost in the classic, edenic cinematography (by Karl Walter Lindenlaub). Akin leans into a gorgeous visual language that evokes nostalgia. He trades frenetic jump cuts and hectic camera angles that define films like Head-On for meditative wide shots that bask in the scale and beauty of the island. Some of the most compelling scenes in Amrum focus on the economy of conflict and how war turns basic commodities — eggs, flour and even sugar — into luxury goods. As Nanning procures these items for his mother, evidence of the Nazis' weakened authority mounts. His mother's depression worsens — especially at the news of Hitler's death — and the young boy feels intensifying pressure to help alleviate it. But the more he learns about his parents and the island, the more he must contend with his own sense of morality. What does it mean to lose faith in one's role models and form an identity outside their ideological purview? It's a conventional narrative drama, but Amrum approaches this question with commendable tenderness. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV
