Tragic Details About White Lotus Star Aimee Lou Wood

The following article mentions addiction and eating disorders.

At first glance, Aimee Lou Wood appears to live a charmed life. When she was in her early 20s, the Manchester native nabbed a career-changing role on the hit Netflix series "Sex Education." After that, it was off to the races. After landing a part in a West End production of "Uncle Vanya" and scooping up a BAFTA for her work on "Sex Education," she played Sally Bowles in the stage version of "Cabaret." On Season 3 of "The White Lotus," she and actor Walton Goggins played an ill-matched couple headed down a path of destruction. And in the 2025 miniseries "Toxic Town," she took on the role of a grieving mother. 

Wood's ascent seems all the more sudden once you consider that she's never been one to chase after the spotlight. "I don't want to not be thinking about f***ing progressing my career for one second, because I don't even f***ing care about progressing my career," she once told GQ. "So why is all my energy going towards something I don't care about?"

Indeed, Wood's almost effortless journey to the top can make her life look like something of a fairy tale. That being said, fairy tales aren't real, and many of Wood's real-life challenges have proven more complicated than her fans could imagine. Over the years, the actor has navigated a number of tragic circumstances, including issues like childhood trauma, low self-esteem, and imposter syndrome.

While Aimee Lou Wood's life seems glamorous and charmed now, her upbringing certainly was a different story. In a 2020 interview with Stylist, Wood explained that her father's own struggles had a negative impact on their family. "My dad was a drug and alcohol addict and he was always coming and going. He would go out for a pint and not come back for days. He once went out and didn't come back for 10 weeks because he'd been to the World Cup in Korea," she said. Wood's parents ultimately split up and her father got sober. "Our relationship's gotten better and better as I've gotten older," she shared.

Throughout these ups and downs, Wood found something that provided her with a creative outlet that she needed: acting. As she told The Guardian in 2023, "It's funny, people like me get into acting because it helps them in some way. It helps you express yourself, or gives you a shield from 'bad things.'" Wood first realized that she could use theater as a "shield" when she was still in school. "I remember thinking, 'I'm at a crossroads. I can either carry on how I am and be really miserable or I can get up and do a funny character that might make people laugh,'" she recalled. Wood chose to follow the route of comedy and never looked back.

Drama class was a welcome break from her personal struggles, but Aimee Lou Wood's school days were not easy. Apparently, the "Sex Education" actor was bullied by her peers. As she revealed in a 2021 interview with The Guardian, many of her classmates would make fun of her teeth and her body.

Wood was teased to such an extent that it torpedoed her self-esteem — so much so, she began to worry that she would never make it as an actor. "I always used to say: 'I will never get a job on TV because I'm too weird looking,'" Wood confessed. "Anyone who's been bullied knows what it's like to hear these things, to internalize it and turn it in on yourself and go: 'If I was just less ugly, just less this, just more this.'" This negative self-talk almost prevented her from auditioning for "Sex Education" entirely. As she told Stylist, "I just thought, 'It's a Netflix show, I'm not going to get on there with my teeth,'" she said.

A small silver lining: One of Wood's bullies apologized years later. As she shared with The Guardian in 2020, a former classmate told her he regretted the way he treated her when they were kids. "I would advise people to talk to their school bullies. The chances are they are now adults who feel really bad about it," she said. 

Growing up, Aimee Lou Wood felt like a bit of an oddball who didn't necessarily connect well with other students. In her aforementioned interview with Stylist, Wood said that she was "weird" when she was a kid. When asked to elaborate on this, the television star said, "Well, put it this way: at primary school, I had an imaginary dog. 'Kenny! Kenny! I've lost Kenny!' I would be crying and everyone would be running about looking for him in the bushes."

While psychologists say that having an imaginary friend is typical for kids between the ages of 2 and 7, Wood's imaginary dog outlived that period. As she explained in the same conversation, the future actor was about 9 or 10 around the time that she asked her classmates to search for her invisible pet. "That was in year five, far too old to be doing that kind of s***, but it was such a safe and lovely environment," she shared. "It was at secondary school that things became more difficult." 

In her 2020 interview with The Guardian, Wood recounted how out of place she felt at her secondary school. "They were all posher than me. The mum of a friend would take the piss out of my Stockport accent. I was getting so badly bullied, but I pretended none of it was bothering me," she said.

When she was still in school, Aimee Lou Wood developed anorexia and bulimia. Opening up about her history with eating disorders in her 2023 conversation with The Guardian, the actor said, "Your body becomes like an enemy. I was so detached from my body when I was in the eating disorders, it was like I was outside it, scrutinizing it. I am very gradually getting over that."

Wood struggled considerably with these eating disorders, and when she was at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, it all came to a head. As she recounted in her 2021 interview with The Guardian, the administration even confronted her about it. "Oh my God, I hated them. I had a completely blank face [when I was taken aside into an office], but inside, this internal anger was like: 'How dare you do this to me,'" she recalled. In the end, though, this kind-hearted interference was apparently good for Wood, who has since described it as "harsh but necessary." Following this important conversation, the actor started therapy and began an important healing journey.

A huge part of acting is being able to fully embody a character. However, for Aimee Lou Wood, this has not always come easily. Speaking at a Harper's Bazaar event in 2025, Wood reflected on how her own relationship with her body has evolved over the years. "I hated my body and didn't want to be in it — that's not the case any more, thank God ... But then, going to drama school, it can get even worse. I have scoliosis, so neutral for me is not neutral for everyone else," she said, per the Independent. The feedback she would get from teachers rattled her confidence. "At drama school I was being told consistently that I was moving my body in the wrong way," she told The Guardian in 2023.

Years later, when she was brought on to play Sally Bowles in a West End production of "Cabaret," Wood could not help but get in her own head about the dance numbers. "So when I walked into a rehearsal, where I have to express myself through my body, I felt like I was going to burst into tears," Wood told The Guardian. "I hate feeling awkward in my own body." 

For many actors, the prospect of becoming famous is thrilling. However, for Amy Lou Wood, the opposite has been true. Ever since she landed her role on the Netflix hit "Sex Education," Wood has become a household name. But what would be a dream for some has proven to be a curse for the actor. The reason? Her fame has meant a massive loss in privacy — something that Wood holds dear. Speaking about this matter in her 2023 interview with The Guardian, Wood explained, "If you've been bullied as a kid, like I was at school, the feeling of being noticed wherever you go... it was not healthy for me." Occasionally, some of the show's viewers went so far as to harass her. "I was at the pub once with Simone [Ashley] who plays Olivia and these guys on another table were shouting, 'I've seen your t**s,'" she told Grazia in 2021. Experiences like this one proved so stressful for Wood that she began to avoid leaving her house. "I stayed at home for a long time. A long time," she confessed. 

On the flip side, some fans who connected with her character's sexual assault storyline would approach her with their own stories. As well-intentioned as the fans might've been, these interactions were profoundly overwhelming. "When you're in fight-or-flight mode, you can't really differentiate," she said in the same interview with The Guardian. In that sense, fame actually made Wood's daily life challenging.

Many stars from "White Lotus" Season 3 have real-life partners, but Aimee Lou Wood is not among them. Despite having dated "Sex Education" co-star Connor Swindells for a while, Wood was single by the time she was in Thailand. She and Swindells split in 2020 after two years of dating. As she told Stylist after the split , "It's very, very amicable and I love him so much, but it still hurts ... Oopsie." In a separate chat with Grazia, she noted that their busy schedules played a role in the dissolution of their relationship. "We'd had some time apart because of work, and then we realised that maybe the relationship wasn't serving us both," she said. "It was an okay breakup, it wasn't dramatic."

Despite these bittersweet feelings, Wood felt that their breakup was for the best. Apparently, the actor suffers from a history of unhealthy relationship patterns — one that interfered with her romance. As she shared in her interview with Grazia, "I find it hard when I'm in relationships to maintain my sense of who I am. I'm very independent, but I'm also quite impressionable. I can be taken away from myself quite easily, I kind of start betraying myself and compromising my integrity, to keep someone else happy."

Even as Aimee Lou Wood's filmography continues to blossom, she can still feel inadequate from time to time. So much so, that she almost didn't try out for "The White Lotus" — even though she dreamed of being on the show while watching the first two seasons. "It puts so much pressure on me. I really tried to trick myself out of [sending an audition] self-tape," she dished to The Hollywood Reporter. And after she did land the part, she experienced a  bad case of imposter syndrome, evidently second-guessing whether or not she was right for the gig. 

"Someone told me how much Mike [White] had fought for me," Wood told GQ of her casting. While this remark was only meant to gas her up, it ended up having an adverse reaction. "My little head goes: 'HBO didn't want me. And I know why HBO didn't want me, it's because I'm ugly. Mike had to say "Please let me have the ugly girl!"' That was the thing that was in my head," she admitted.

Wood does recognize that she adds some fuel to the negativity fire. As she told Stylist, "It's a myth I've told myself. I had it in my brain that I'm not conventional-looking enough [to play certain roles] and that's a mental barrier I've had to overcome."

As previously noted, Aimee Lou Wood was teased for her teeth growing up. Now that she is a public figure, her smile has gotten attention on an entirely different level. "I can't believe the impact my teeth are having," she said on an episode of "The Jonathan Ross Show." "It feels so lovely, a real full-circle moment after being bullied for my teeth forever."

While Wood does appreciate the love her teeth have received, she's also grown tired of it being the number one talking point. "The whole conversation is just about my teeth, and it makes me a bit sad because I'm not getting to talk about my work. They think it's nice because they're not criticizing ... And, I have to go there... I don't know if it was a man would we be talking about it this much? It's still going on about a woman's appearance," she said in her aforementioned interview with GQ.

"The White Lotus" star shared a similar sentiment in a 2025 interview with Glamour. "When it becomes the only thing that's spoken about, I'm like, 'I did a load of work. I did seven months of really hard work,'" Wood said. She also noted that the obsession with her teeth feels weird and she just wants to move on.

The conversation around Aimee Lou Wood's teeth reached fever pitch the week after "The White Lotus" Season 3 ended. The "Saturday Night Live" episode that aired on April 12, 2025, featured a "White Lotus"-themed parody of Donald Trump and his administration. But American politicians were not the only ones who were mocked by the sketch comedy series: Cast member Sarah Sherman did an impression of Chelsea, Wood's character from "The White Lotus," that involved wearing a pair of false teeth and a joke about not using fluoride. 

Wood was quick to criticize the sketch's lack of sensitivity. Taking to her Instagram Stories (via Daily Mail), the actor acknowledged that she was not happy about the impression, writing, "I did find the SNL thing mean and unfunny." 

Although she did ultimately receive an apology from "SNL," Wood's troubles did not end there. Even after she called out the sketch, Wood's "White Lotus" co-star Walton Goggins praised it. In his own Instagram Stories, Goggins called the sketch "smashing" (via Page Six). The timing of his positive reaction to the sketch led many fans to believe that Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood are feuding.

One might assume that Aimee Lou Wood is happy with where her life is, given the amount of success she has had in one of the most competitive industries on the planet. The reality, however, is much more complicated than that. Though she loves what she does for a living, she can't but help but picture herself leading a private and chill existence. As she told The Cut, "I have a whole fantasy recently that I could open a bookshop in Cornwall, and I'll write." In her aforementioned conversation with GQ, she also admitted that she'd frankly rather spend time hanging out with her friends than worrying about what's next for her as an actor. 

Wood also hopes to one day start a family. "I think this is why I get really obsessed with having a baby," she explained in GQ. "Because if I have a baby, everyone will leave me the f*** alone! And I can't have a baby for that reason. I've always wanted a cozy house and a baby and a fire. I just want that. That's the dream." For now, though, Wood knows that this dream is not exactly in the cards. Instead, it seems, she'll settle for the goal of becoming a writer. As she told Stylist, "I'd like to write something of my own, maybe a play that I could put on in a pub theatre and make into a TV show. I'm always writing about unrequited love and miscommunication."

If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues or an eating disorder, please contact the relevant resources below:

• Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
• Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).