Madison De La Garza Reveals 'Desperate Housewives' Role Led to Eating Disorder at Age 7

justjared.com:

Madison De La Garza is looking back at being cast on Desperate Housewives. The 21-year-old actress, who is also the half-sister of Demi Lovato, joined the cast of the hit ABC series for season five as Juanita Solis, daughter of Eva Longoria‘s character Gabrielle Solis, in 2008 when she was just six-years-old.

In a new interview, Madison recalled her “first memories of trying to starve herself” at age 7 after reading cruel and hurtful comments about her appearance online. Keep reading to find out more… “The reactions that I got to my character on Desperate Housewives, it was just shocking,” Madison shared on the Heart of the Matter podcast. “A lot of people came at it in a way that they were ‘concerned for my health.’ And I personally believe that that’s just not true, that that was a cover-up so that they could just judge a 6-year-old.” Madison said that she was “was never allowed to be on a computer unsupervised at that age,” but she recalled sneaking online and spending “hours and hours” reading hurtful comments on YouTube videos and TMZ. “I would just spend a crazy amount of time reading through these comments, and most all of them were just atrocious,” Madison said. “They said things like they wanted me to die because of what I looked like.

It was just horrible. And this was when I was 7, 8 years old.” “Reading comments like that definitely affected my mental health and ultimately played into me developing an eating disorder at a very young age,” she added. Madison went on to recall how she was cast on the show as the “opposite” of Eva‘s character. “The whole joke of my character was that Eva was this thin, beautiful model and her daughter turned out to be quite the opposite,” Madison explained. “And so, I think