Portia de Rossi has revealed she used to abstain from eating for up to 10 days when she was a child model.
The actress spoke to “Entertainment Tonight” about her long history with bulimia and anorexia, which started when she was just 12 years old.
“I felt tremendous responsibility when I was 12 years old and I was put on a catwalk,” said the “Scandal” star, now 42. “My modeling agents had told me to go on a diet. So I didn’t eat for 10 days before then.”
De Rossi opened up about being bullied by the other models and dealing with the pressure by binge-eating. “I’m up on this catwalk, and I’m a little kid and posing and trying to be sexy and strutting around and all the other models are making fun of my bushy eyebrows,” she said.
“When I got in the car after that event and just opened up a bag of my favorite candy and just put my whole head in it and I think, ‘S–t, what have I done? I just undid two weeks worth of dieting.’ So then I vomit.”
The “Arrested Development” star, who is married to Ellen DeGeneres, spoke about her battle with bulimia in the second season of the ET Online docuseries “It Got Better.”
“I erase the feelings with food, erase the food with vomiting, but you’re still left with the shame,” she explained in the video.
De Rossi has spoken publicly about her battle with eating disorders in the past and penned a memoir, “Unbearable Lightness,” in 2010 which addressed her struggles with her weight and sexuality.
“Nobody can really get inside the anorexic’s mind like the anorexic. I abused my body. I had bulimia. I would use [diet drug] fen-phen. I wanted to talk about all that,” she said at the time.
In May 2014, de Rossi checked into a Malibu rehab facility for a one-month stay, reportedly for drug and alcohol treatment.
In 2000, she sought treatment for an eating disorder after her weight reportedly dropped to just 82 pounds.