Julia Stiles recently got candid about her secret struggles with disordered eating following the pressure of weight gain.
The 44-year-old American actress, who shares three children with her husband, Preston Cook, appeared on the latest episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, where she revealed her relationship with food and herself started healing after embracing motherhood.
Stiles quipped, “In my twenties and early thirties, being an actress, there was so much focus on your appearance and how you’re going to fit into certain clothes.”
The mother of three added, “I’m not the first person to say this – and even coming from a mother who never emphasized those things – food and all that stuff was so stressful.”
She went on to explain that the constant pressure of being a certain way in the entertainment industry made her develop a “disordered relationship with it all. I’m not talking about an eating disorder – it was just restrictive, regimented, stressful. I always worried that it was going to be out of my control. Like, what if I gain weight?”
“There was stress around what your body looks like and trying to mould your body into a certain size. As an actress, we go and promote on a red carpet, and we have to wear sample sizes from fashion designers. So it’s always, ‘Are we going to fit into the sample size?’” the Bourne Identity star noted.
Moving forward, Stiles shared an advice Julia Roberts gave to her when they were filming a movie, Mona Lisa Smile, in 2003.
Speaking of Roberts, she said, “She was an amazing example for us, and she was so maternal with all the young women on that set. She was coming from a lot of experience of being not just a woman, but also a woman where your appearance is focused on so heavily.”
“She said to us, ‘You’re going to look back on these photos of you in your twenties and be like, I was beautiful – why didn’t I see that?’ And she’s totally right!” Julia Stiles recalled.
