Child star Madison De La Garza, best known for playing the role of Eva Longoria’s daughter, Juanita Solis on “Desperate Housewives,” revealed she suffered from an eating disorder at the age of 7.
De La Garza said during an appearance on the “Heart of The Matter” podcast that her struggles were a direct result of the show. Being famous at such a young age opened her up to scrutiny and body image issues she wasn’t able to handle. She said those comments triggered her into “trying to starve” herself. “The reactions that I got to my character on Desperate Housewives, it was just shocking,” she said.
Madison De La Garza, who started on “Desperate Housewives” at six years old and stayed for four seasons, says “horrible” online comments about her weight resulted in her trying to starve herself.https://t.co/Br0kZvzXkh
— TMZ (@TMZ) April 14, 2023
De La Garza explained that she was privy to all the criticism despite her loved ones’ best efforts to shield her from the press.
De La Garza said she was “was never allowed to be on a computer unsupervised at that age,” but recalled childhood memories of sneaking online and spending “hours and hours” reading comments on YouTube videos and TMZ.
“I would just spend a crazy amount of time reading through these comments, and almost all of them were just atrocious,” she said on the podcast.
“They said things like they wanted me to die because of what I looked like,” she said.
“It was just horrible,” said the actress.
“And this was when I was 7, 8 years old.”
De La Garza admitted to being deeply affected by the comments written about her body.
“Reading comments like that definitely affected my mental health and ultimately played into me developing an eating disorder at a very young age,” she said.
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The popular actress admitted that Longoria went out of her way to better her experience.
“The whole joke of my character was that Eva was this thin, beautiful model and her daughter turned out to be quite the opposite. And so, I think she was very aware that this was going to affect me,” she said.
“We never explicitly talked about it, but [Longoria] definitely went out of her way to make me feel like I was pretty and like I was special, and she made me feel like I was family,” De La Garza said. (RELATED: ‘Harmful Celebrities’: Critics Slam Kim Kardashian’s Emphasis On Body Image)
“And if I ever did want to go to her with these things, I absolutely could have,” she said.
De La Garza is Demi Lovato’s half-sister, and made her debut on season 4 of the hit ABC series.