When Olivia Rodrigo reached her twenties, she realized that she had spent much of her childhood working.
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The “Drivers License” singer admitted in an interview with The Guardian that she was overcome with sadness when she turned 20 in February because she realized she had missed out on many formative childhood experiences. “Like, ‘Oh shit, I worked my whole childhood and I’ll never have that again.’ I didn’t go to football games, I didn’t have this group of girlfriends that I hung out with after school. “It’s a little sad,” she revealed.
The singer joined Disney Channel at the age of 12 on the 2016 series Bizaardvark and recently left the network after three seasons of High School Musical: The Musical Series. And while she’s grateful to Disney for giving her “such an incredible opportunity,” she admitted that being a child star is sometimes “very difficult.”
“I think it’s an interesting situation to be so young and working at this level. It’s really easy to feel undervalued or not taken seriously, she shared. It’s really, really hard to be a kid and an actor, and sometimes you feel a little exploited. The responsibility, the feeling of being criticized in public, the feeling of having to work a lot and seeing your friends going to pool parties and hanging out together while you’re stuck on set. . [Mais] I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The “Good 4 U” singer is also happy that she was able to leave the “High School Musical” series shortly after her music career boomed. “I really felt how stressful it was to have two full-time jobs, writer and actress, and do both well,” she added in an email. I always knew I wanted to make music and focus on songwriting, but balancing those two commitments proved difficult at the time.”