Mischa Barton Describes 'Full-On Breakdown'

Mischa Barton is opening up for the first time in nearly a decade after starring on The O.C. about her breakdown and the pressure she felt at 17 from being on the hit show.

"We thought, 'Work hard, play hard,'" she tells People magazine of her teenage years on the hit FOX series.

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By 2007, the final year that The O.C. aired, Barton, now age 27, was arrested for a DUI. In 2009, the actress was placed into Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center psychiatric ward after she "blacked out under the influence of a sedative" and threatened suicide. Saying of that time, "It was a full-on breakdown. I was under enormous pressure."

Barton -- who is returning to acting with her movie I Will Follow You Into The Dark and the TV pilot The Gutsy Frog where she stars alongside Frankie Jonas -- tells the magazine that it was this incident that made her finally get healthy. That, however, wasn't so easy. "It was always, 'She's too skinny, she must be sick.' Then it was, 'She's too big.' I was never the right weight."