Maisie Williams is getting candid about the turmoil she faced as a child actor on Game of Thrones.
Williams, now 26, rose to stardom as Arya Stark on the HBO fantasy series from 2011 to 2019. She told The Sunday Times in an interview published on Saturday, February 17, that she felt “so lost for so long” while embodying the character, whom she began to play at age 12.
“I knew that I was [lost], and when I couldn’t pin down what I felt my identity was within that, it brought me a lot of discomfort,” Williams said.
Williams confessed that “it’s hard to even put myself back there and talk about how tough it was” now that she’s on the other side of her struggles. She explained that while “playing characters has been so enthralling,” it was difficult to find the balance at “a really formative time in my life.”
“It was at its absolute worst when I also was the most out of touch with myself — not knowing your identity and that kind of thing — I think rejection at that point felt so personal, so painful,” she continued. “I’d solely compare myself to other actresses, and the way people looked, and all of the most destructive ways that you can compare yourself.”
Williams has become “a lot more comfortable in my own skin” since her Game of Thrones days. She’s even encouraged fellow child stars to “text me or call me” if they ever need guidance from a peer.
“I really dig within myself to try and bring out something that I feel would be really useful,” she said.
Since leaving Arya Stark behind, Williams continued to challenge herself on both the small and big screens. She now plays Catherine Dior on the Apple TV+ series The New Look, which debuted this month, and she underwent an intense transformation to step into the role.
“It was hard work, but it was such an honor to do this part, and it became all-consuming,” she told Harper’s Bazaar UK in a February 6 interview. “This was a role that required an extraordinary amount of research and care — and it really hit me, bringing that wartime period back to the streets of Paris; like I would acknowledge the weight of it in a way that I hadn’t before.”
Based on the book Miss Dior, the series tells the story of Christian Dior’s younger sister Catherine, who was a French resistance fighter during the Nazi occupation of Paris and served as inspiration for the iconic fashion designer.
Catherine narrowly escaped death at the Ravensbrück concentration camp and returned to Paris emaciated. As part of her preparation, Williams dehydrated herself to lose water weight before filming. She shed nearly 26 pounds in total.
“I was eating very little, meditating all the time, burning candles and incense in my apartment,” Williams told the outlet. “I had to be up at 4 a.m. to start sweating. The night before, at about 7 or 8 p.m. I was allowed to have something salty and dehydrating — some smoked salmon and a tiny glass of wine. Then I had a boiling-hot bath with lots of salts in it. And I sort of levitated to bed and slept for maybe three hours, and woke up and had a handful of nuts. I wouldn’t be able to sleep through the night at this point.”
Williams previously opened up about struggling with her body image while filming Game of Thrones.
“Around season 2 or 3, my body started to mature and I started to become a woman,” she told Vogue in October 2019, several months after the show’s conclusion. “But Arya was still very much, like, trying to be disguised as a boy.”
Williams continued: “I had really short hair and they’d constantly cover me in dirt and shade my nose so it looked really broad and I looked really manly. They’d also put this strap across my chest to flatten any growth that had started. I don’t know, that just felt horrible for six months of the year, and I felt kind of ashamed for a while.”
The series finale helped usher in a “new phase” in Williams’ life. “Like, it’s nice to look more feminine and, like, have a real waistline and just, you know, embrace the body that I have,” she noted.
