Maisie Williams has said she “resented” her Game Of Thrones character as she began to go through puberty.
The actress, now 24, reflected on becoming an adult while filming the long-running fantasy epic during an interview with GQ Style.
She was cast as Arya Stark a few months after her 12th birthday in 2009, and spent the next decade working on the HBO show.
Recalling the day she was handed a bra in the costume trailer, she said: “I think that when I started becoming a woman, I resented Arya because I couldn’t express who I was becoming.
“And then I also resented my body, because it wasn’t aligned with the piece of me that the world celebrated.”
Williams did not walk the red carpet for Game Of Thrones until the launch of season three in Los Angeles in 2013
“I’m grateful we were protected from it until that point, too,” she said.
“If that had happened when I was 12, I’m not sure what that would have done to me mentally.”
Williams also said she was hesitant to accept her latest role as punk model Jordan Mooney in Danny Boyle’s TV series about the Sex Pistols, after discovering the script demanded she strip off.
The Bristol-born star features alongside Queen’s Gambit actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Talulah Riley, best known for roles in St Trinian’s and Westworld, in Pistol.
She said: “Just because of everything that happens in the industry and all the horror stories I’ve heard.
“I want to be in this show because I’m the best person to do this, not because I’m the only girl who’ll take her top off.”
After airing her concerns to show bosses, Boyle sent her a clarification that eased her worries.
She said: “Jordan was a political statement.
“Her entire ethos was turning the male gaze in on itself, and it was overtly sexual in a way that made other people feel ashamed.
“If I take my top off, I want to make other people feel uncomfortable.”
Read the full feature in the GQ Style spring/summer 2022 issue available on Thursday April 14.