I love being natural. I never feel more beautiful then after I’ve been to the beach and my hair’s just a crazy mess of salt curls, or when I’ve just been outside all day hiking. I feel like my skin is at its most beautiful during those times, too - so I try not to do a lot.

You can have a disordered relationship with food, but to have an eating disorder is indicative of a mental illness, which I think needs treatment and recognition in a different way.

I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. So you asked, ‘When things get really, really difficult in your life, what keeps you going?’ For me, it’s always that the most difficult moments in my life, the moments in which I believe I’ve completely failed or hit bottom, I can actually directly link them to something later that is either a true success or a dream come true. So, I do believe that if you can maintain that everything happens for a reason, you can find the strength and the lesson in those difficult moments and grow stronger.

As I got older, I had a bunch of friends that were various teen stars. I've always known people in the spotlight and people who just grew up in LA and had nothing to do with the industry.

In high school I was a nerd and very acad­emic. On the weekends, instead of going out and partying, I’d close myself in my room and read Shakespeare. I hid from boys. I didn’t know what a boyfriend was, although I think I wanted one.

Even when I was young I wanted to be an actress. I knew the actors and the paparazzi. It was just kind of always in my landscape. It was never directed at me, but it was always somewhere so I could see how it operated and I could see it from afar and go 'Wow, that's not really glamorous, it's kind of exhausting not having any privacy.' So it was never something I pursued. The first time I saw the billboard for Pretty Little Liars I almost got into a car accident!

Hollywood is a challenging place; it's very easy for people to lose their heads. Fortunately, I grew up on it and I think I have a little bit of a head start.