Sarah Paulson struggles to switch off from characters

Sarah Paulson wishes she was better at letting go of her characters at the end of a filming day.

The American Horror Story actress admitted to Deadline that she isn't very good at leaving her characters at the door when she clocks off for the day.

"I wish I could say I was one of those people who knew how to compartmentalise," she told the publication. "So, I'm not a person who can kind of do a particularly harrowing scene or deal with something particularly upsetting and then just sort of go about figuring out what I'm gonna eat for dinner. I'm not very good at that. I need to get better at that because the consequence of course means I end up carrying some of it around longer than I would like to."

Paulson noted that because she shot her new psychological horror Hold Your Breath on location in New Mexico, she wasn't doing "anything but the movie" and it was hard to let it go each evening. However, she found this "helpful" because it allowed her to keep track of the complex story and her character Margaret's mental state.

"So I almost felt like I was too busy trying to hold the complete story in my head to allow myself to descend too deeply inside of it," she continued. "I wish I had a real answer of how I shake it because sometimes I don't think that I do, I think it all just gets into the sort of nooks and crannies of my being and makes a house there. So, I'm not always the best at alleviating some of that."

In Hold Your Breath, Paulson plays a mother in 1930s Oklahoma who becomes convinced that in a mysterious presence in the dust storms is threatening her family.

The film is now streaming on Hulu/Disney+.