Lady Gaga has revealed that spending a year and a half in character for her upcoming movie House Of Gucci took its toll on her mental wellbeing.

The singer and actress, 35, plays Patrizia Reggiani in the Ridley Scott-directed crime biopic.

Patrizia is the ex-wife of Maurizio Gucci - grandson of Guccio Gucci, founder of the designer fashion label.

In real life, Maurizio was shot dead in 1995 and Reggiani was convicted of ordering his murder in 1998. She was released from prison in 2014.

Speaking to British Vogue, Gaga said: “It is three years since I started working on it and I will be fully honest and transparent: I lived as her for a year and a half. And I spoke with an accent for nine months of that.

“Off camera, I never broke. I stayed with her. It was nearly impossible for me to speak in the accent as a blonde. I instantly had to dye my hair, and I started to live in a way whereby anything that I looked at, anything that I touched, I started to take notice of where and when I could see money.”

She continued: “I had some psychological difficulty at one point towards the end of filming. I was either in my hotel room, living and speaking as Reggiani, or I was on set, living and speaking as her.

“I remember I went out into Italy one day with a hat on to take a walk. I hadn’t taken a walk in about two months and I panicked. I thought I was on a movie set.”

House Of Gucci - which also stars Al Pacino, Adam Driver and Jared Leto - is an adaptation of Sara Gay Forden’s 2000 book, The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story Of Murder, Madness, Glamour And Greed.

House Of Gucci is due for release in UK cinemas on November 26.