Olivia Rodrigo felt sad when she turned 20 because she realised she had spent much of her childhood working.
The Drivers License singer admitted to The Guardian that she became overwhelmed with sadness when she turned 20 in February because she realised she had missed out on many formative experiences.
“Like, ‘Oh s**t, I worked my whole childhood and I’m never going to get it back.’ I didn’t go to football games, I didn’t have this group of girlfriends that I hung out with after school. That’s kind of sad,” she candidly revealed.
The singer joined the Disney Channel when she was 12 years old with the 2016 TV show Bizaardvark and only recently left the network after three seasons of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.
While she’s grateful to Disney for giving her “such an amazing opportunity”, she confessed that it was “really hard” being a child star at times.
“I think it’s an interesting situation to be so young working at that level. It’s really easy to feel trivialised or not taken seriously,” she shared. “It’s just really hard to be a kid and an actor, and you can feel maybe a little taken advantage of sometimes. The responsibility, feeling criticised in public, feeling like you have to work so much and you see your friends who can go to pool parties and hang out, and you’re stuck on set… (But) I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The Good 4 U hitmaker is also glad that she was able to leave the High School Musical series early after her music career took off.
“I definitely felt how stressful it was to have two full-time jobs – songwriting and acting – and to do them both well,” she added in an email. “I always knew I wanted to pursue music and focus on songwriting, but at that time it proved difficult to balance both obligations.”
