Zoë Kravitz on eating disorder: 'I Felt Pressured'

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Zoë Kravitz is the daughter of a rock icon and a legendary teenage tv star — yet her life hasn’t always been as charmed as you’d think.

In the April/May cover of Complex, she talks about her battle with anorexia and bulimia as a teen and the trappings of growing up with such widely idolized parents.

She tells Complex:

“I had a really hard time when I was 16, 17, 18. I started with the eating disorder in high school….” She trails off at this, and puts her hand to the side of her face, rubbing her right ear, and then dials back to the beginning of that thought: “Just [a hard time] loving myself.”

In high school, she became anorexic and bulimic—“awful diseases” she’d battle to various degrees until the last two or so years. And here, she’s willing to acknowledge to a certain degree her pedigree playing a darker kind of role: “I think it was part of being a woman, and being surrounded by [fame],” she explains, before backtracking: “I don’t think it was about the fame, but I think it was definitely about being around that world, seeing that world. I felt pressured.”

Kravitz also shares that her mom, Lisa Bonet, was worried she might slip into old habits while shooting The Road Within in which she played young woman battling anorexia:

“It was f****d up, man,” she sighs. “You could see my rib cage. I was just trying to lose more weight for the film but I couldn’t see: You’re there. Stop. It was scary.” She got sick after filming wrapped. She didn’t get her period regularly because she was too malnourished. Her immune system shut down, her thyroid was thrown off. Recovering from the brutal shoot, she wasn’t receptive to praises from friends who were happy she was gaining weight, either. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to gain weight,’ as opposed to being like, ‘Good, I’m a normal human being.

“My mother’s a…,” she says, hesitating, “…beautiful woman, and I think, in some way, I felt intimidated by that sometimes.” Also: “My dad dated a lot of supermodels,” she laughs.

“Everyone sees themselves in some weird, obscure way.” She says her mom also struggles with her own insecurities. “People meet her and don’t know what to do with themselves, but”—and here, she takes care to emphasize with conviction—“she doesn’t know how f*****g cool she is. Or what she means to the rest of the world.”

To read even more from Kravitz’s candid new interview, check out the latest issue of Complex.