25 Former Female Child Stars Who Exposed The Dark Reality Of Hollywood

5. Selena Gomez

Selena Gomez has been increasingly vocal about the pressures and feelings of violation she experienced as a child star, particularly during her time with Disney. Looking back, the singer and actress has openly described feeling exploited and unsafe long before she was old enough to understand why. In a 2017 interview with The Business of Fashion , Gomez recalled one particularly unsettling experience from her mid-teens, when she was just 15 or 16 years old. “I remember just feeling really violated when I was younger, even just being on the beach,” she said. “People were taking pictures – photographers. I was a young girl and they were grown men. I didn’t like that feeling.” What made the experience even more confusing for Gomez was that she wasn’t yet widely recognizable at the time. “I don’t think anyone really knew who I was,” she explained. “But I felt very violated, and I didn’t like it or understand it, and that felt very weird.” As her fame grew, Gomez also struggled with being noticed solely for her physical image rather than her work, admitting that “my passion started to really feel like it was going further and further away. And that scared me.” Years later, during a 2022 Hollywood Reporter roundtable, she shared that she had often felt “ashamed” and “overs*xualized” throughout her career. “I actually did an album cover and I was really ashamed after I did it,” she said. “I had to work through those feelings because I realized it was attached to something deeper that was going on.” While the pop icon did not name the album, many fans speculated she was referring to her 2015 album Revival , which marked her transition into more adult music and imagery. She has also acknowledged feeling pressured to “show skin” during that era, admitting it didn’t fully reflect who she was at the time. “I’m not an overly s*xual person,” Gomez clarified. “Sometimes I like to feel s*xy, but that doesn’t mean it’s for somebody else. It can be for me.”