Nearly a decade after falling victim to a now-infamous photo leak scandal, Glee alum Heather Morris is opening up about how the incident impacted her work life and mental health.
“To say I was MORTIFIED is an understatement,” the 33-year-old actress recalled in a lengthy Instagram caption on Tuesday, May 12, addressing the publishing of intimate pictures of her and “many other actresses” back in 2012. “My body was and still is part of my job and I felt like I couldn’t even walk around my work place [without] thinking that everyone had seen every single piece of me (a couple of snide comments from co-stars came my way which didn’t help).”
In March 2012, Morris became one of several Hollywood women, including Olivia Munn and Jennifer Lawrence, whose private photos were released online after being hacked. A source told Us Weekly at the time that the Spring Breakers actress was “keeping a good sense of humor about the whole thing” and wasn’t “going crazy over it.” However, Morris admitted that the scandal impacted the way she looked at her own body.
“Shortly after that faded away into the abyss, I had two kids and became a mom, so till this day, I’ve been VERY sacred about how I display myself and definitely still don’t even feel [100 percent] comfortable in anything riskay [sic],” she wrote alongside a photo of herself posing in a bright bikini. She later admitted that not feeling pressured “to be a twig or a certain weigh/shape/size” was a difficult realization for her to “come to terms with.”
Despite the challenging stigma she faced at the time, Morris did her best to keep her head high amid the scandal. Shortly after her own salacious photos made headlines, Lawrence, 29, opened up about the “disgusting” and violating nature of the leak. “Just because I’m a public figure, just because I’m an actress, does not mean that I asked for this. It does not mean that it comes with the territory,” she told Vanity Fair in November 2014. “It’s my body, and it should be my choice, and the fact that it is not my choice is absolutely disgusting. I can’t believe that we even live in that kind of world.”
Though looking back at the harsh criticism she faced still hurts nearly 10 years later, Morris worked hard to gain her confidence back and is feeling better than ever in her own skin.
“It’s a f–cking challenge and a tough one at that, but I just want to say..let’s not anyone feel ashamed of who we are and just go kick some ass when we want to and feel good about ourselves,” she wrote. “I’m done… 👊🏻.”
