Lady Gaga Admits She Was on Lithium While Filming 'A Star Is Born' Before 'Really Scary' Psychotic Breakdown

Lady Gaga opened up about filming an Oscar-nominated film on lithium and the "really scary" challenges that followed.

"I did A Star Is Born on lithium," Gaga, 39, revealed in a cover interview with a news outlet published on Thursday, November 13.

Although Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, didn't disclose a diagnosis, lithium is "used to treat mania that is part of bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness)," per the Mayo Clinic.

The Joker actress got candid about the highs and lows of her career, explaining that immediately after filming the 2018 movie, which earned eight Oscar nominations, she started her Joanne World Tour and went through what she called a psychotic break.

"There was one day that my sister said to me, 'I don't see my sister anymore,'" she recounted. "And I canceled the tour. There was one day I went to the hospital for psychiatric care. I needed to take a break. I couldn’t do anything … I completely crashed."

The "Paparazzi" singer called the experience "really scary," saying, "there was a time where I didn't think I could get better.…  I feel really lucky to be alive. I know that might sound dramatic, but we know how this can go."

Gaga credited her fiancé, Michael Polansky, for being her supporter during the tough time, telling the outlet, "Being in love with someone that cares about the real me made a very big difference."

Gaga was introduced to Polansky, 42, in 2019, after her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, met the entrepreneur at a fundraiser. The "Bad Romance" musician is known to keep the relationship out of the spotlight, but confirmed her engagement publicly in July 2024 when she introduced him as her fiancé while speaking at the Summer Olympics in Paris.

"When her mom first started telling me she wanted to set me up with her daughter, I thought she had to have been joking, because nobody in my life would’ve thought of me as somebody who wanted to get attention," Polansky noted of the experience during the interview. "How could somebody who is so shy and wants so much privacy love someone that would cause his life to become the exact opposite of everything he thought he wanted?"

The pair teased possible wedding bells in their future, with the venture capitalist teasing that they "talk about it all the time."

"We have these breaks, and they're tempting. It’s like, 'OK, can we get married that weekend?'" he explained. "We don't want a really big wedding, but we want to enjoy it. In a lot of ways, we already feel married, so it's not like it's gonna change much."