Barbie Ferreira Says She Has a ‘Fear of Being Perceived’ Despite Her ‘Entire Life’ Being in the Spotlight (Exclusive)
Barbie Ferreira Says She Has a ‘Fear of Being Perceived’ Despite Her ‘Entire Life’ Being in the Spotlight (Exclusive)
Bailey RichardsTue, April 7, 2026 at 4:23 PM UTC
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Barbie Ferreira on April 2, 2026Credit: Gary Gershoff/Getty -
Barbie Ferreira stars in new horror movie Faces of Death, in which she plays Margot, a content moderator with a "sense of justice"
She tells PEOPLE that she relates to Margot's "fear of being perceived," despite her "entire life" centering on it
Ferreira shot to fame with her breakout role as Kat in hit series Euphoria, which she has since exited
Barbie Ferreira is opening up about her “fear of being perceived,” a quality she also brings to the big screen in new horror film Faces of Death.
The 29-year-old actress stars as Margot, a content moderator who stumbles upon what she believes are snuff re-creations of the deaths featured in the titular 1978 mondo flick. Ferreira tells PEOPLE that she found the character relatable for several reasons — one of them being her “fear of being perceived.”
Reflecting on her Faces of Death role, the star — a model-turned-actress who skyrocketed to fame with her breakout role on Euphoria in 2019 — says that “the fear of being perceived, despite my entire life being focused on being perceived,” was “really relatable to me.”
But the thing she found “most relatable” about Margot, Ferreira says, is the character's "desperate need to fix a broken world that you can't do yourself, but having this incredible calling and purpose to try to fix things that are completely unfixable.”
Barbie Ferreira in 'Faces of Death'Credit: IFC Films
In other words: “Margo's sense of justice — which I love to say,” she says.
“And I think for me in 2026 — even in 2023, when we shot this — it’s hard, because you're bombarded with all of these horrible things all day, all over the world, on the internet," the actress tells PEOPLE. "And you feel very hopeless and you feel like you can't do anything."
“There's nothing that an individual can do,” she continues. “It's kind of set up that way so that you feel like … constantly just really on edge, on fight or flight, and the world is awful and kind of falling into this nihilism of that.”
Despite the circumstances she describes, Ferreira says she still finds herself relating to Margot’s desire "to fix everything that is unfixable, and the disappointment and the shame that comes from that.”
Ferreira previously opened up about why it was “very jarring” living in the wake of her Euphoria fame, which thrust her into the spotlight, in a 2025 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
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Barbie Ferreira in 'Faces of Death'Credit: IFC Films
Reflecting on how her life changed after she found breakout success playing Kat in the hit series — which she later exited in what she described to PEOPLE as a “mutual decision” — the actress told THR, “It informed everything.”
“It was my first job and so I learned so much about myself, who I am as an actor and what I want to do,” Ferreira told the outlet. “It was so fun and weird to be on a show that just blows up. All of a sudden, you’re 22 and, like, 'What?' I had no idea what to do.”
The experience, she continued, “was a really great crash course with the whole aspect of people watching your show and coming up to you. In that aspect, it was very jarring for me.”
“Now I feel free in a way where I get to really do what I want, and I get to produce stuff that I like and be in these stories that I probably wouldn’t have had time for if I were on the show,” she added at the time. “It’s been really great.”
Barbie Ferreira in December 2025Credit: Araya Doheny/Getty
Post-Euphoria, Ferreira has turned her attention largely to film, notably appearing opposite John Leguizamo in 2024’s Bob Trevino Likes It, and made her Broadway debut (with the support of some of her former Euphoria costars) in Cult of Love.
The star has two features hitting the big screen in April: Faces of Death and Mile End Kicks.
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Faces of Death — which also stars Dacre Montgomery, Charli xcx, Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday and Jermaine Fowler — is in theaters April 10.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
