Holly Madison had a "lot of fear" living in the Playboy Mansion.
Holly Madison
The 36-year-old beauty spent seven years living in the iconic house with her former boyfriend, 89-year-old tycoon Hugh Hefner, and his other girlfriends but she has now admitted that time of her life was a "constant struggle" and she always had to put on a happy facade.
She said: "It was a constant struggle. I was trying to sell this image of 'Oh everything is so great here,' but I was miserable inside.
"The Mansion is all about conformity and judgment and following the rules.
"I didn't like being a clone. That was definitely something that bothered me the whole time. But the Mansion wasn't a place where confidence was built. It was a place where manipulation was used to keep everyone scrambling to keep her spot in the house."
"There was so much competition among the other women. I learned not to confide in certain people. There was a lot of fear."
Holly left the Mansion in 2008 and went on to find love again, marrying Pasquale Rotella in September 2013.
Though she doesn't want to go back to her old life, Holly - who is pregnant with her second child, a brother for three-year-old daughter Rainbow - already knows what she would do differently if she did get to retrace her steps.
She told People magazine: "If I could go back and do things differently, I wouldn't be scared of people.
"And I'd push the boundaries a lot more. The number of times I stuck up for myself at the Mansion I could probably count on one hand."
But while she spent so many years unhappy, Holly insists she doesn't have many regrets because she learned from that part of her past.
She said: "It's a part of my life. I can't look back and wipe it away. It happened and I learned from it. [Now], I'm not trying to fit the mold of what anybody else thinks I should be. And I'm not running away from my past anymore."
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