Boy Meets World Star calls out Hollywood’s Treatment of Child actors

Maitland Ward, who starred in Boy Meets World and The Bold and the Beautiful recently claimed that young actors were treated like a “product” in the “Hollywood machine” when she was a child star.

During an interview with Fox News Digital published on April 26, Ward, now 49, opened up about her experience ahead of appearing in Investigation Discovery’s Hollywood Demons. The episode, “Child Stars Gone Wild,” drops on April 27.

“I can’t speak to how Hollywood is today because it’s such a different animal than it was back when I was getting into it,” Ward acknowledged. “Back then, I think they looked at these young actors as like property coming in. And I really believe the studios, they wanted to mold and form these young actors into what they wanted them to be, what they needed them to be for the company and for the audience, to what they felt would identify with.”

She described her time as a child actor as “a factory kind of environment,” admitting that it felt “like you were just a product being sold.”

She continued, “I mean, I didn’t think anything was wrong at the time with anything that was going on, really. I mean, it felt ill at ease in my own body and all my feelings and stuff, but I thought that was just me being stupid. I have to be professional. I have to be part of that Hollywood machine. And that’s really what it was.”

In Boy Meets World, Ward played Rachel McGuire from 1998 to 2000. Her character was a roommate of Jack (Mattew Lawrence) and Eric (Will Friedle in Seasons 7 and 8. Meanwhile, Ward played Jessica Forrester in The Bold and the Beautiful from 1994 to 1996.

source: tvinsider.com