Madeleine West’s heart breaks for her younger self when she sees old red carpet photos of herself taken in the early 2000s.
On Wednesday, the Australian actress, 47, shared a photo taken at the Royal Albert Hall in London during one of her very first outings on the world stage after she joined the cast of Neighbours.
In 2000, a 22-year-old Madeleine was cast as Dione ‘Dee’ Bliss on the beloved soap.
The photo shows a beaming young blonde on the cusp of stardom— dolled up in a vibrant blue gown as she stepped out onto the red carpet for England’s National TV Awards.
‘This image breaks my heart,’ Madeleine captioned the throwback image, adding a trigger warning for eating disorders as she detailed newfound fears for her daughters in the age of AI.
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Former Neighbours star Madeleine West, 43, has revealed the heartbreaking details of her Barbie-inspired eating disorder – which was at its peak when she appeared at the National TV Awards in London in October 2000
Madeleine welcomed her seventh child to the world in April.
The star already shares five daughters and one son with her ex-partner, celebrity chef Shannon Bennett.
In a column for Kidspot, the mum-of-seven wrote about the fears she holds for her daughters now that their toys are being integrated with AI chatbots.
‘Thanks to AI, Barbie will soon be talking back. I for one am worried…because as a little girl, I wanted to be Barbie,’ she said.
‘Barbie epitomised what I thought it meant to be an empowered woman. She could be a doctor, a sports star, ballerina, anything and everything despite the fact that structurally Barbie couldn’t stand on her size 3 feet or fit any organs into her negative size 0 body.
‘None of that made me doubt for a second that she had an enormous brain in that equally oversized head that her elongated neck was incapable of supporting.
‘She was all I wanted to be, and I got close.
‘All it took was a fanatical addiction to fitness, fakery, and an eating disorder that almost killed me twice in my teens.’
Madeleine West says she achieved her Barbie-esque proportions, pictured here: ‘All it took was a fanatical addiction to fitness, fakery, and an eating disorder that almost killed me twice in my teens.’
Madeleine first spoke about spoke about her battle with anorexia two years ago, after revealing she was the victim of childhood sexual abuse
‘By virtue of the suggestibility I suffered from living most of my life in the shadow cast by childhood abuse, I almost made the fantasy a reality,’ Madeleine continued in her caption.
‘But I knew, deep down, that she wasn’t real.’
In June, Mattel announced it will partner with OpenAI to ‘design, develop, and launch groundbreaking experiences’ for its iconic toys, including Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Polly Pocket.
Madeleine is calling on parents to ask if integrating generative AI models, such as ChatGPT, with beloved children’s brands can be deemed safe.
The child safety and victims’ advocate first spoke about her battle with anorexia two years ago, after revealing she was the victim of childhood sexual abuse.
Speaking to Stellar magazine in February 2023, the actress said the trauma of being abused as a child caused her to become obsessed with looking ‘perfect’ – a task that was both ‘punishing’ and never-ending.
‘For every sexually abused person, what has happened to them will manifest in their life in some self-destructive behaviour,’ she told the publication.
‘They are never, ever to blame. What happened to them is a cross to bear.’
Madeleine revealed that in her early teens, not long after the abuse stopped, she developed anorexia as a coping mechanism.
Madeleine welcomed her seventh child to the world in April. The star already shares five daughters and one son with her ex-partner, celebrity chef Shannon Bennett
‘My autonomy over my body had been snatched away, so to demonstrate I had some control over it I denied that most simple desire: hunger,’ she explained.
‘I just wouldn’t eat, then over-exercised. Pain and hunger made me feel something, because I had become accustomed to operating in a state of utter numbness.’
Madeline played Dione ‘Dee’ Bliss and Andrea Somers on Neighbours from 2000 to 2020 and also starred in the WWE movie The Condemned in 2007.
