"This Is Us" star Chrissy Metz has opened up about her life in a new memoir "This Is Me" where she details facing physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her stepfather.
The 37-year-old star, who grew up in poverty, shot to international fame with her portrayal of Kate Pearson on the hit TV show.
The actor said when she was 8 years old, her father left her mother Denise to raise Chrissy and her two elder siblings -- Monica and Philip. Her mother had another baby with a boyfriend before she met their future stepfather, Trigger.
"I'm a tough cookie. But it's one of those things that attempts to break your spirit" Metz told People magazine.
The actor said while her stepfather loved his biological children, he was offended by the way she looked.
"My mom married Trigger at the courthouse. Soon she was pregnant again, with another girl, Abigail. Trigger loved his two biological children, and was even welcoming to Morgana. Me, not so much. My mother was always at work, so she didn't see how he treated me.
"My body seemed to offend him, but he couldn't help but stare, especially when I was eating. He joked about putting a lock on the refrigerator. We had lived with a lack of food for so long that when it was there, I felt like I had to eat it before it disappeared. Food was my only happiness," she writes in the book.
Scared of her stepfather's scrutiny of her food, the actor said she started to hide what she ate.
"And so, I began to hide my eating. I'd get up in the middle of the night and eat. I'd sneak food to eat in the bathroom. Cookies, chips. Things I could eat as fast as possible to avoid detection. Things that would give me the brief bliss of numbness.
"I don't remember why Trigger hit me the first time. He never punched my face. Just my body, the thing that offended him so much. He shoved me, slapped me, punched my arm. He would hit me if he thought I looked at him wrong. I remember being on the kitchen floor after he knocked me over, and I was begging to know what I did. He just shoved me hard with his foot."
Metz said as she entered her teens, the abuse became worse and her stepfather would often ask her to weigh herself and then ridicule her.
"When I was fourteen, Trigger began weighing me. He'd get the scale from the bathroom and clang it hard on the kitchen floor. 'Well, get on the damn thing!' Trigger would yell. 'This is what you need to know'.
"He sat in a chair next to the scale as I got on. Good God almighty!' he yelled every single time. The number then was about 140 or 130. Most of my friends weighed about ninety pounds. 'Why are you getting fatter?' he demanded. I look at pictures of me from that time, and I would be so fine with being that size now. But I thought I was gigantic."
The actor said her beating had escalated by that time and once she thought "if I had a gun, I thought, I would shoot you."
Metz said she felt conflicted about hating her stepfather as she really loved him.
"Afterward, I was so upset with myself. How could I think that about this person I loved so much? Because I really did love him. This man did more for me than my father ever did. He was smart, and I was allowed to quietly join him in watching the Ken Burns Civil War documentaries on television. I clung to (it) because I needed to figure out why this person could do right by me as a provider, but be unable to love me."
The actor said Trigger was eventually contrite about the way he treated her and they are now in a positive place.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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