In an interview with a UK psychological magazine we uncovered amid her Baldoni battle, the 37-year-old actress said: “I was pretty shy growing up. I had problems with some of the other girls in high school. And, because I was tall, I felt insecure about standing out in a crowd when I really just wanted to disappear and be alone.
“I was kind of withdrawn and I spent a lot of time by myself lost in my own thoughts.
“It wasn’t until I began taking acting classes that I was able to overcome my shyness in social situations. When I was 15 or 16, I started becoming much more outgoing and enthusiastic with people.
“I had spent so much time being this strange introvert but, deep down, I was longing to have fun and be expressive.”
LA native Lively landed her breakout role aged 18 in ‘chick flick’ The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Two years later she was starring as bitchy Manhattan IT girl Serena van der Woodsen in teen-friendly TV show Gossip Girl.
Success and cash didn’t stop her being haunted by insecurities and she found the glare of showbiz swallowed her self-confidence – and Lively spent her 20s wracked again by the same self-doubt that plagued her growing up.
“As a young adult when you’re living on your own and making your own way in life you can lose that confidence, especially in this business,” she said.
Lively went on: “A lot of self-doubt started to creep into my head, even though I was on a successful TV series.
“I went through so much soul searching and it took me several years to regain my confidence.
“But I also think so much of that just had to do with struggling to figure out who you are, especially in your 20s.”
Lively was aged 23 and her husband of six years Reynolds was 34 when they started dating after meeting as co-stars on the set of 2010 flick Green Lantern.
The 11-year gap made no difference to Lively, who says she fell in love with him after initially becoming “best friends.”
Lively credited Reynolds in the chat for transforming her life despite the actor saying he has endured a lifelong battle with anxiety and depression.
He blames his condition partly on his “complicated, fractured” relationship with his “tough” dad, who died from Parkinson’s disease shortly after meeting his namesake granddaughter.
Canadian Reynolds – who has admitted to self-medicating away his depression by partying himself into oblivion until he was shocked into sobriety by pals’ overdoses – has said: “I’ve always had anxiety – both in the lighthearted, ‘I’m anxious about this’ kind of thing, and I’ve been to the depths of the darker end of the spectrum.”
He has gushed he’s lucky to have Lively around “to keep me sane.”
But six years into their marriage the couple was hit by rumors Reynolds‘ depression was causing a rift in their marriage – with pals saying Lively begged him to get therapy for his sudden bouts of depression, especially for the sake of their kids.
And in May last year Lively fuelled rumors they were on the rocks by unfollowing Deadpool actor Reynolds on Instagram and deleting her happy-family posts.
But in her psychology magazine chat, she insisted life could not be better with Reynolds and their kids at their home in the quiet town of Bedford, upstate New York.
