In Lily Collins’ new role for the film To the Bone, she had to relive a deeply personal experience. The drama, which debuted at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of a woman battling with anorexia—a challenge Collins has faced head-on. Now, the 27-year-old is speaking up for the first time about her experiences with eating disorders.

“I suffered with eating disorders when I was a teenager as well,” Collins said in a new interview with IMDb. “I wrote a book last year, and I wrote my chapter on my experiences a week before I got [director] Marti [Noxon]’s script, and it was like the universe kind of putting these things in my sphere to help me face, kind of dead on, a fear that I used to have and a way to explain it as someone who’s gone through it and to open up a topic that is considered quite taboo with young people nowadays, male, female, and to really start a conversation,” she said.

And while Collins worked with a nutritionist to embody the role physically in the safest way possible, she admits her headspace at the time was challenging.

“It did require a different set of emotional skills and to kind of go back in time for me, with…my experiences,” she said.

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