Ariel Winter has left Hollywood — and she’s feeling healthier than ever.
In the past, the Modern Family star has opened up about her awful experiences as a child actor. In a 2017 interview, she accused her mom Crystal Workman of contributing to the sexualization she dealt with in her early career. She also opened up again in 2021 about her relationship with her body and the online scrutiny she’s faced since she was a child. And yeah, every bit of that happened while she was living in her hometown of Los Angeles.
There’s no doubt Ariel has dealt with a lot throughout her life as a child star, and she revealed to People in their cover story on Wednesday that her experiences are exactly what pushed her out of the Hollywood scene.
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While speaking to the outlet, the 27-year-old got real about her trauma, starting with how her self-esteem was damaged when she was just 14:
“[The negativity] was just everywhere. It was every headline I read about myself, like, grown people writing articles about me saying how I looked terrible or pregnant or like a fat slut. I mean, I was 14. It totally damaged my self-esteem.”
The Sofia the First alum said very early on she got hit with despicable posts:
“I understood what it was like to be hated. No matter what I was going through, I was a target. It made it very difficult to look at myself in the mirror and go, ‘I love this version of me’.”
So sad…
Ariel’s tense relationship with her mother didn’t help, either. It wasn’t until the Department of Child and Family Protective Services removed her from Crystal’s care and put her in custody of her older sister Shanelle Gray that things finally start looking up:
“I went on to have a great rest of my teenage years thanks to being under her custody.”
Ariel made it clear that even though she’s sharing a lot about her childhood, she doesn’t want to go into too much detail about the horrors she endured:
“Honestly, it’s just my entire childhood. It’s a really deep, painful, sore, sore part for me that’s so much deeper and bigger than I’ve ever felt ready to talk about.”
The Alex Dunphy portrayer says she’s undergone lots of therapy, which has helped her state-of-mind tremendously. What helped even more, though, was when she said goodbye to El Lay with her beau Luke Benward in 2020. Now, she lives more of a domestic life with their six pooches, far from the industry-obsessed city.
Leaving Tinseltown doesn’t mean she’s given up on her career, though. So her fans don’t need to worry — she’s got plans for more acting roles, a podcast, and even a cooking show in the future:
“I didn’t leave the industry. I just left the city of LA. It holds some not-great memories for me, and I’m young and never lived anywhere else, and thought, ‘Why not?’ If you’re no longer on a network show that shoots there, you don’t really have to be there, and if I get a network show, I can easily go back.”
We love to hear how well Ariel is doing, and how she’s making these important decisions with herself in mind. We hope she continues to heal and pursue the things that make her most happy.
[Image via Peacock/YouTube/MEGA/WENN]
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