Actress Zendaya has said that she had to learn to "protect" herself as a child star. The 27-year-old actress shot to fame in her early teens when she was cast alongside Bella Thorne in the Disney Channel sitcom 'Shake It Up'.
She progressed with a glamorous Hollywood career in later years but admitted that she sometimes wishes she could have stayed as a normal kid for a "bit longer" as she recalled feeling very "vulnerable" at a young age, reports ‘Female First UK’.
Speaking on YouTube series PayOrWait, she said: "It's a lesson you have to learn young. I was a kid thrown into a very adult industry where if you do have a perspective or something to say, it's like 'Well they're a kid'. And the parents...it's like...they are just the parents so you have to learn how to protect yourself quite quickly.”
“For me, it was a lesson learned quite early - back in my Disney days - of little tricks and little things I could do to protect myself, or protect my peace or protect my happiness. I think when you're a kid in this industry, you're very vulnerable. I do wish I could have just been a kid for a little bit longer but yeah, the lessons happened very early. I don't know if there was a specific moment but it definitely happened quite young, having to learn to have my own back a little bit.”
Source : ENT