Lily Collin Battles Eating Disorder In Her New Film

Etonline.com: Lily Collins is opening up about playing a woman battling anorexia in "To the Bone" following her real-life struggles with an eating disorder.

“It was an entire physical experience, emotional experience,” the actress told ET’s Lauren Zima at the EE British Academy Film Awards nominations event earlier this month. “But I was supported, and it's a really important story to tell.”

“It’s a topic that is taboo, I think, with young girls, and it's really important to tell a story with this subject matter in the way that we tell it,” continued Collins, who is also the daughter of singer Phil Collins. “And, I'm so proud of it, and I'm excited that we're going to Sundance.”

The 27-year-old actress revealed her struggles while talking to IMDB Studio during promotional duties for the Marti Noxon-directed the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, over the weekend.

“This was definitely a more dramatic role for me. I suffered with eating disorders when I was a teenager as well,” she said. “I wrote a book last year, and I wrote my chapter on my experiences a week before I got [writer-director Marti Noxon's] script. It was like the universe putting these things in my sphere to help me face, kind of dead on, a fear that I used to have.”

The Mortal Instruments star added that she shed pounds for the role with the help of a nutritionist, admitting that the weight loss took her mind back to her own battle with the illness. “It did require a different set of emotional skills, to go back in time for me, with my experiences,” she shared. “So definitely a different type of film for me to do, very, very personal.”