Demi Moore developed eating disorder after Hollywood producer repeatedly told her to lose weight: ‘Embarrassing and humiliating’

Demi Moore reflected on the “humiliating” moment a Hollywood producer told her she needed to lose weight at the beginning of her career.

The 62-year-old actress opened up about her years-long battle with body image issues during a new interview with Elle, admitting the constant scrutiny about her body led her to develop an eating disorder.

“There is a lot of torment I put myself through when I was younger,” Moore shared.

“The perfect example is when I was told to lose weight multiple times,” she continued. “The producer pulled me aside. It was very embarrassing and humiliating.”

While the “Ghost” star didn’t name the producer, she said their comments catalyzed her obsession with dieting and exercise.

“But that’s just one thing,” she added. “How I internalized it and how it moved me to a place of such torture and harshness against myself, of real extreme behaviors, and that I placed almost all the value of who I was on my body being a certain way — that’s on me.”

The “Substance” star rose to fame in the late ’80s, telling the outlet, “I changed my body multiple times through different roles, and I think I chose those roles, whether it was conscious or not, for the very opportunity to find some peace and self-love.”

While that approach worked on-screen, her life off-screen quickly became consumed with self-destructive tendencies tied to her appearance.

In Moore’s 2019 memoir, she said her exercise “obsession” became a serious problem while preparing for her role as a naval lawyer in “A Few Good Men” — just a few months after giving birth to her daughter Scout.

“I didn’t feel like I could stop exercising,” Moore wrote in “Inside Out,” per the Independent. “It was my job to fit into that unforgiving military uniform I’d be wearing in two months in ‘A Few Good Men.'”

“Getting in shape for that movie launched the obsession with working out that would consume me over the next five years,” she added. “I never dared let up.”

Despite her body showing serious signs of distress, Moore ignored her doctors’ warnings and increased her training for her next project, “Indecent Proposal.”

“I would be on display again, and all I could think about was my body, my body, my body,” she wrote.

“I doubled down on my already over-the-top exercise routine. I cut out carbs, I ran and I biked and I worked out on every machine imaginable.”

The “Striptease” star said she became hyper-aware of everything she ate and, despite knowing it was wrong, she couldn’t stop.

“If all this obsessing about my body sounds crazy to you, you’re not wrong: eating disorders are crazy, they are a sickness. But that doesn’t make them less real,” she wrote.

It wasn’t until she finished the vigorous — and wildly unsustainable — regimen for “GI Jane” that she finally “had an epiphany” and realized she “just needed to be [her] natural size.”

If you or someone you know struggles with an eating disorder, visit the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) website or call their hotline at (800)-931-2237 to get help.