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Maisie Williams has shared details about her ‘traumatic’ childhood relationship with her father.
The 25-year-old opened up about her difficult early years in an interview with Steven Bartlett for his Diary of a CEO podcast.
Maisie rose to international fame after landing the part as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones aged 12, a role she played between 2011 and 2019.
She shared how her childhood has had a lasting effect on her mental health, including struggling to sleep.
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“Well, I, as a young child before the age of, like, eight, had a traumatic relationship with my dad,” she shared. “And I don’t want to go into it too much because it affects my siblings and my whole family.
“But, like, that really consumed a lot of my childhood. Ever since I can remember, I’ve really struggled sleeping. And I think a lot of the traumatic things that were happening, I didn’t realise that they were wrong.”
Maisie said the situation with her father ‘had met its peak’ when she was eight and a teacher at her school raised her concerns in the staff room with her.
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Maisie said: “And she was saying, like, ‘What’s wrong,’ you know, like, what’s happened? Are you hungry?’ ... ‘Did you eat breakfast?’ I said, ‘No.’ And she said, ‘Oh, why not?’ And I said, ‘We just don’t have any breakfast.’ And then she says, you know, ‘Do you normally have breakfast?’”
“I was indoctrinated in a way,” she said, reflecting on her childhood. “I think that’s why I’m obsessed with cults. Because I’m, like, I get it. I get it. I was in a child cult.”
Maisie said she was glad she no longer had to see her dad but admitted to feeling conflicted about the situation.
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“You can feel so liberated and free and at the same time, just like that impending doom is kind of still there,” she revealed.
The Pistol actor has been open about her mental health and the effect of becoming famous at an early age had on her.
In the interview she shared that she battled identity issues, anxiety and mental health struggles as a child and a young adult but she has been reflecting on her past experiences.
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“To be honest, I have been thinking about this a lot,” she shared with Steven. “It’s not because of me that these bad things happened when I was a child.
“I thought it was. I thought there was something inherently wrong with me, that it could be anyone experiencing the pain.
“It made me more interested in the guy. What could make you mistreat your own children? What happened to you as a kid? Did you pull the legs off bugs? Did you learn all this?”
“That’s how I feel about him now. He would make a fascinating documentary.”
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If you've been affected by any of the issues discussed in this article, help is available through Mind
Gregory Robinson