Jessica has been acting for a long time. When she appeared in Never Been Kissed, she was only 18 — and when she made her film debut in Camp Nowhere, she was 13 years old.
During a recent interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace, Jessica said she felt sexualized by Hollywood at an early age — and that she had to protect herself from the industry’s “predators” as well.
“I understood that I needed to help sell the product, and they sell it how they do,” she said while talking about how her image was presented by the media. “So I understood it as a business decision and as a strategy.”
Jessica went on to clarify that there’s “nothing wrong” with expressing one’s sexuality, while also stating that “at that time, I definitely was not that person.”
“I was very nervous about all of that, and I was quite uncomfortable in my own skin.”
Jessica added that it wasn’t until she became a parent that she began to “even see myself as a woman or a sexual being, or someone who owned her power and her femininity.”
She also said there were a lot of “predators” in Hollywood from when she was 12 years old until she was 26 — which was when she became pregnant with her first child, Honor.
Jessica said she “cursed like a sailor” and acted like a “warrior” to ensure that people would leave her alone. “At that time, I felt like I was very much having to put up this armor of masculine and masculine energy, so I wouldn’t be preyed on,” she explained.
“I think I tried to make myself as unavailable as possible so that I wouldn’t be taken advantage of.”
Watch the interview clip here.
