Anna Chlumsky felt like she was "for sale" as a child star.
Anna Chlumsky struggled with stardom as a child
The 41-year-old actress shot to stardom playing Vada Sultenfuss in 1991's 'My Girl', and she admits that her early success eventually became a burden.
She explained: "I was lucky because I didn’t have any other huge traumas at the time. I’m the baseline of [child stardom] going relatively well. Yet it was only as an adult that I discovered any sense of reliability or security.
"When I was a child those did not exist, because I was for sale."
Anna - who took a break from acting between 1999 and 2005 - thinks there's a "huge societal blind spot about young people in the public eye".
The actress believes child stars often lack the tools and knowledge needed to navigate adult life.
She told The Independent: "It’s not just actors and people in the public eye but athletes, musicians, even now these online personalities.
"Children don’t have agency. That’s one of the things they’re meant to be learning. So when you suddenly put professional, financial, adult and public - often sexualised - pressures on them, you not only open them up to a world that is commoditising and objectifying them. You’re also setting them back from their ability to develop. So when they are faced with [adult life], the tools aren’t there."
Anna graduated from university amid her acting hiatus, and she thinks that spending so many years out of the spotlight actually gave her some "perspective".
She explained: "Going to college was my first act of standing up for myself and asking myself what I wanted, making my own decisions. You’ve got to start somewhere, if you didn’t get to start at the optimal age."