Former actress Amanda Bynes graduates from fashion school
Some happy news for Amanda Bynes: She just graduated from California’s Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.
Bynes, who first enrolled in FIDM back in 2014, graduated on Monday, close friends of the 33-year-old former child star tell ABC News, confirming a tweet Bynes posted that same day.
“FIDM graduate 2019 #fidmgraduation,” Bynes captioned a photo from Monday of herself and a friend in their caps and gowns on graduation day.
Those same friends tell ABC News that Bynes received a day pass from her inpatient mental health treatment so she could attend her graduation.
Even though Bynes seems to have turned things around in recent years and even contemplated a return to acting while pursuing her fashion design degree, she experienced a bit of a setback earlier this year.
Bynes is expected to continue inpatient treatment until the end of the summer, sources tell ABC News.
The actress, who once had two hit Nickelodeon shows and later starred in films including "Easy A," has since suffered from mental health and addiction issues.
Bynes had a series of arrests along with very public meltdowns from 2010 to 2014.
Last year, Bynes discussed her past substance abuse issues in an interview with Paper Magazine.
She told the magazine that she tried cocaine and ecstasy recreationally, but the drug she abused most was Adderall.
She said that while working on her hit 2007 film “Hairspray,” she came across "an article in a magazine that [called Adderall] 'the new skinny pill,' and they were talking about how women were taking it to stay thin. I was like, 'Well, I have to get my hands on that.'"
She also opened up about how her body image affected her mental status. After viewing her 2010 film “Easy A,” in which she starred alongside Emma Stone, she described "having a different reaction than everyone else to the movie."
"I literally couldn't stand my appearance in that movie and I didn't like my performance. I was absolutely convinced I needed to stop acting after seeing it," she told the magazine.
"Those days of experimenting [with substances] are long over. I'm not sad about it and I don't miss it because I really feel ashamed of how those substances made me act,” she told Paper. “When I was off of them, I was completely back to normal and immediately realized what I had done -- it was like an alien had literally invaded my body. That is such a strange feeling."
ABC News' Hayley FitzPatrick contributed to this report.
