Ed Helms Opens Up About the Anxiety of Fame After Success of ‘The Hangover’: ‘I Was Kind of Spinning Out and Panicking’

Actor Ed Helms got candid about the “tornado of fame” that hit him following the success of the 2009 comedy, The Hangover.

On the Monday edition of Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, Helms discussed his long career and how everything changed following the blockbuster film.

“It was a tornado of fame and a lot of buffeting,” Helms said. “It was very overwhelming. But I also — I feel very lucky on that as well because, I had — my public persona had risen gradually and we had, like, when I was on basic cable on The Daily Show, we had what (Stephen) Colbert liked to call ‘toy fame.'”

Helms elaborated that “toy fame” was where you were still able to go out and about and sometimes be recognized by a random person.

“I was on The Office for a couple of years before The Hangover. And that was another ratchet up cause that’s network television,” Helms said.

The actor said his character on The Office, Andy Bernard, had a lot of catchphrases, “which of course ups the ante with public recognition.”

“I had a little bit of — I had some skills set, I guess and just in sort of dealing with that, but then The Hangover was a whole new level,” Helms said.

Helms credited his Hangover co-stars Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis with helping to keep him calm.

“If it wasn’t for those guys, I don’t think I would’ve stayed sane, but we all had each other to kind of be like, you know, I don’t know, just to commiserate and measure ourselves… and I think we kept each other from drifting too far. And being too unprofessional,” Helms said.

Helms says he wishes he could experience the situation all over again with the knowledge he has now.

“I really was reeling a lot of the time, like in the aftermath of The Hangover, just kind of like get, like how I was handling my — I was getting scripts for all these different kinds of projects. ‘Like what do I do? I dunno.’ I was kind of spinning out and panicking about different things. Like, ‘Well, what kind of a career do you want?'” Helms recalled.

“I definitely felt a lot of anxiety and like identity kind of — just turmoil. And I will say one of the — one of the craziest things about a — about a like massive jump into fame like that is — and this is what I think people who have never dealt with that or been close to it, just can’t understand is the just total loss of control of your environment,” he added.

Watch above via Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend.