Anna Kendrick was pressured to agree to nude scenes as a teenage actress.
The 39-year-old star can next be seen as aspiring actress Cheryl Bradshaw in 'Woman of the Hour', which she has also directed, and she admitted a scene where her alter ego is asked to appear naked was "lifted verbatim" from her own experiences.
In the scene, Cheryl says "not for me" when asked if she would be willing to bare all, prompting a male casting director to gesture towards her breasts and say: "Oh, I'm sure they're fine."'.
Anna grew emotional as she told The Guardian newspaper: “That is lifted verbatim from something that happened to me when I was 19. Oh boy...
"I’ve, um … I’ve had experiences where I found out there was a wardrobe change that the costume designer had been cagey about, likely because she felt her hands were tied. It’s like you can’t get to the bottom of it: ‘Wait – sorry – um, why would I be in a bathing suit in this scene?’ "
The 'Pitch Perfect' star was quick to stress her experiences are less common these days.
She added: "But I’m grateful that this happens a lot less now. And when you say you’re uncomfortable, there’s more of a culture of being taken seriously.”
Anna previously revealed she had spent five years in a coercive relationship and she's admitted she still has "good days and bad days" in recovering from the abuse she experienced.
Asked how she feels now, she said: “I have good days and bad days. But it’s more accurate to call them good months and bad months.
"If you’d asked me three years ago, I would have said there was something almost embarrassing about that. Like: ‘Aren’t you over it by now?’
"But I guess I feel a lot grosser saying, ‘I’m doing great.’
"If we speak in another five years, please God tell me I’m not still struggling then, you know? I don’t know how much of that feeling is based in my pure desire to feel OK versus: ‘That’ll mean I’m such a weakling.’ It’s all still swirling around in there somewhere.
"[My therapist] says: ‘Grief has tentacles.’ Meaning that whenever there’s some minor challenging event in the present, it reaches back to more challenging things in the past. Sometimes I feel this specific event in my life is with me all the time and I wish I could just put it away.”
