'Game of Thrones' star Maisie Williams says it 'felt horrible' to have her chest strapped down to play Arya Stark

Julia Hunt
·Contributor
Updated

Maisie Williams has admitted she felt “horrible” having to have her breasts strapped down to keep her looking young and “manly” in Game of Thrones.

The actress started playing Arya Stark on the HBO fantasy series when she was 14 and by the time it ended, she was 22.

She told Vogue that her body started to “mature” a couple of seasons into the show.

“But Arya was still very much like trying to be disguised as a boy and I had really short hair and they constantly covered me in dirt and shaded my nose so it looked really broad and I look like, really manly,” she said.

“And they would also put this strap across my chest to flatten any growth that had started, and I don’t know, that just felt horrible for six months of the year.”

Williams added that she “felt kind of a bit ashamed for a while,” and is now enjoying looking more feminine.

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Williams made her professional acting debut as Arya and the role made her a household name.

However, earlier this year she confessed she was not interested in becoming any more famous than she is now.

She told the Observer that during her career she had seen publicists wanting to create a “media storm” around young stars and would not want that for herself.

Williams said at the time: “My agents say things to me like, ‘We’ll raise your profile,’ and I don’t really understand what that means because to me it sounds like getting a whole lot more famous, which is something I’m not interested in.”

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