Billie Eilishis opening up about her teen fame.

“Growing up in the public eye is avery bruising experience, and it’s really hard to grow and change,” Eilish told the BBC, who named the 20-year-old one of their 100 Women of 2022. “I just didn’t really know what to do. I was just grasping at straws.”

Eilish has been living in the public eye since 2015 when a SoundCloud recording of her brother Finneas' original songOcean Eyeswent viral overnight.

She now has anOscar, 7Grammy Awards, 100 million followers on Instagram and more than 60 million on TikTok.

“I’m an internet kid,” she said. “I saw everybody else in the public eye when they were (famous), and suddenly it’s me.”

BBC

Billie Eilish Says Growing Up in the Public Eye Has Been ‘Bruising’

For Eilish, the problem is that to most people her public identity was created when she was 15 and to many is forever set in stone. So making any changes to that persona as she gets older sometimes feels impossible.

“It absolutely drives me insane that you can look up Billie Eilish and videos that come up are things I said when I was 15,” she told the BBC. “Almost nothing I said before two months ago I still believe.”

Now that she’s turned 20, Eilish has gained her footing and her confidence, but it wasn’t always smooth sailing — and a big part of that, she said, is because she’s a young woman. It’s “really hard to make people believe in you” as a woman in her industry, she added.

“It was a very satisfying moment when I realized that people actually either wanted to hear what I had to say or believed in what I had to say. And when I finally had control was a really good moment.”

Finneas and Billie Eilish.Stefanie Keenan/Getty for LACMA

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 05: (L-R) FINNEAS and Billie Eilish, both wearing Gucci, attend the 2022 LACMA ART+FILM GALA Presented By Gucci at Los Angeles County Museum of Art on November 05, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for LACMA)

Even now, having solidified the power she said she’d been wanting in her career, theOscar winnerstill struggles to feel like she deserves the success she’s had.

“I just had such severe imposter syndrome,” Eilish said. “I’ve had that so many times in my life. And really just like, some parts of last year and the year before, whew — was just in that downward spiral of imposter syndrome and just grasping at whatever I could to make me feel like myself again.”

Thebad guysinger is notorious for keeping her life private, but in recent months has opened a door on her relationship with singerJesse Rutherford— eleven years her senior.

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Billie Eilish talks BF Jesse Rutherford for first time

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source: people.com