Former Disney actor turned adult star Maitland Ward exposes ‘dark side’ of Hollywood

Former Disney star Maitland Ward has spoken about her experience in Hollywood when she was going through it as a young star.

Ward, 49, was in the Disney show Boy Meets World, before going on to appear in the likes of Dish Dogs and White Chicks.

Since then her career has taken a bit of a different direction as years later she started working in the adult industry after Hollywood directors told her she was 'too old to be sexy'.

She's also argued for better rules and clauses to be in place, having said: "In the sets I have always been on, if you say no, the rule is the filming stops with no questions asked."

In a recent interview with Fox about her upcoming appearance in an episode of Hollywood Demons she talked about what Hollywood was like for her as she remarked that back in the day young actors were seen 'like property'.

She said: "I can’t speak to how Hollywood is today because it’s such a different animal than it was back when I was getting into it.

"Back then, I think they looked at these young actors as like property coming in.

Maitland Ward said Hollywood of the 90s and 2000s turned young stars into 'products' (MEGA/GC Images)

"And I really believe the studios, they wanted to mold and form these young actors into what they wanted them to be, what they needed them to be for the company and for the audience, to what they felt would identify with.

"I think it was such a factory kind of environment. Like you were just a product being sold, and you knew that yourself, I mean, I didn’t think anything was wrong at the time with anything that was going on, really.

"I mean it felt ill at ease in my own body and all my feelings and stuff, but I thought that was just me being stupid. I have to be professional. I have to be part of that Hollywood machine. And that’s really what it was."

Speaking about being part of Hollywood Demons, a show which looks behind the glitz and glamour of famous life, she said she found it 'very therapeutic' to take part as she thought about 'my young self coming up in a business that thought of her as a product'.

She said: "They just wanted it for what they wanted it for. And then cast it aside when they didn’t. And that happened to many, many young actors."

She said talking about the dark side of Hollywood had been 'very therapeutic' (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Ward talked about how the Hollywood of the late 90s and early 2000s and the pressure it put on young actors, especially young women, to conform to a certain ideal.

She didn't like to use the terms, but Ward thought Hollywood put young women 'into this box' where they had to be 'either a virgin and a slut all at once'.

The 49-year-old pointed towards the treatment of Britney Spears and how the singer 'had to go on TV and swear up and down she was a virgin', but at the same time 'was being used provocatively for her body and her sexual image'.

Britney Spears has in the past talked about her managers attempting to 'portray me as an eternal virgin' even when she was living with then-partner Justin Timberlake.

Speaking out against the 'twisted male gaze that Hollywood was just inflicting on everybody', Ward said back then they'd been told it was what the audience wanted, but when she talked to people about her old work the things they said they loved were different.