Eliza Dushku

When actress Eliza Dushku celebrated her 30th birthday this past December, she received an extraordinary gift she’ll never forget: a gift that will give her the satisfaction of knowing her compassion will heal those who have had their rights abused in Uganda for years and years to come. Dushku launched the ’Raise $30,000 by Her 30th Birthday’ charity project in order to raise money to build a recovery center for former child soldiers in Uganda. Dushku asked her family, friends, and fans to donate to the cause instead of buying her gifts. And that is why Eliza Dushku and The True Beauty campaign are a perfect match; she is someone who uses her inner beauty to make a difference in the lives of others. When I spoke with Dusku recently for her part in Team True Beauty, she emphasized on her hopes for our society to shift its focus from just the outward appearance and for women everywhere to support one another and speak out for what’s right! I am honored to present Eliza Dushku’s Team True Beauty story.

Thank you so much Eliza for joining Team True Beauty! We greatly appreciate your support.

Eliza- It’s such a great organization. It’s awesome! I feel like for a while there the only thing our media and our culture was pushing was a size zero idea of perfection that was absolutely unattainable. And girls and women were just suffering all the time all over the world and of all different ages. I feel like more and more now there are awesome groups that are sort of dispelling that horrible idea.

Starting out as a young actress in Hollywood, did you feel the pressure to be very thin, maintain a certain look, size?

Eliza- Absolutely! My first memory, I was 15 or 16, it was with my first publicist, and it was my first photo shoot and my publicist full blown told me I was fat and didn’t look good in a picture. And that he couldn’t get me in any more magazines or pieces because of my body. I was pretty tiny! I was just a teenager. It was just horrifying. It gave such a feeling of shame and humiliation because someone so confidently tells you that something is so wrong with you and you don’t sort of have the self-love that maybe you get as you grow older. The teenage years are so impressionable, and it’s devastating. So I absolutely went through it. And then in other times in my career and even in my 20’s when it came up it was horrible. I turned 30 this year and I’m starting to be able to feel comfortable regardless of what anybody thinks or what anybody says about certain ways that I look and ways that I’m built.

How did you rise above that criticism or get through that feeling of shame?

Eliza- You know I’m always so thankful that I have an amazing mother. I have an amazing family and friends. And my mother was just never a stage mom. My mom is the antithesis of a stage mother. She’s a professor and she taught Women’s Studies. I remember her reading a book called Reviving Ophelia of young women and their body images. So she was already so queued into these challenges that I was going to be facing as a young woman in our society today. She was just incredible, that even though that publicist said that and it humiliated me in the moment, I felt like I had enough of a deep sense of self love instilled after that point from my mother. It didn’t send me down the route of an eating disorder or anything like that, thankfully.

You starred in Bring It On, did you feel a lot of pressure during the filming of that having to wear cheer-leading uniforms for the majority of the film?

Eliza- Bring It On, there was a time in the middle where truly I didn’t have to work out. I didn’t have to watch what I ate. I just sort of had natural metabolism. I remember some of the other girls were struggling with that factor. I remember on another film that I did where I played a cheerleader and one of the young woman was fired. They literally told her her ass looked too big in a cheer-leading uniform. It was just unbelievable! Here we are in this day and age where you think there’s just acceptance and equal respect between men and women in this country and yet here are these men who are in a position of power who can so blatantly make a move like this and not have any consequences. For myself, as I went later into my career, there’s absolute full pressure when you know you’re going to have to show some skin and your image is on display and you know that people are going to be judging. You know from everything you look at. From every magazine, from every movie, from every time an actress steps out and they’ve gained a few pounds, you know that you’re going to be considered hot or not. So you do definitely jump into workouts and it can be a terrifying and just not healthy place to be. For me in the last five years I have found a way to just maintain what I feel comfortable and healthy in. What size. And sometimes it’s up and sometimes it’s down. Different factors contribute to how skinny or full my body is, but I’m honest today about my life and about what’s important. My image to people that don’t know me, that aren’t going to be contributing to my life in any positive way, they don’t get a say.

Definitely a good mentality to have. I also feel like if you don’t focus so much on just your image, you’ll have more longevity in your career. If you make it more about passion and your talent, rather than just what you look like.

Eliza- Absolutely! I think you’re right. I’ll say it’s one of the hardest things to hear and to really process and operate from that kind of a clear perspective because the majority is telling you the opposite. Especially in the Hollywood fishbowl. The tabloids and the magazines. Think about it. How many people would you say are talking about plus-size models, whether it’s designers or magazines, versus your average super-twiggy fit model? I mean it’s such a fraction.

Miss San Antonio recently lost her crown because they said she gained a few pounds which was against the pageant’s rules.

Eliza- It goes all around. It’s incredible. I have a girlfriend who was a cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys and she said they would measure them by a quarter inch every couple days. It was just paralyzing to think oh my god, if I gain a little bit of water! (Laughs) If I eat a French fry! It really is like a prison. It’s such a confining. I think it all comes down to this personal shame and to me shame is just like the biggest poison that humans can inject and humans can live. Shame will poison your soil. And yet that’s what triggers when we look at our image in society.

How do you think it can change? What do you hope for in terms of this issue?

Eliza- That just that the more that those stigmas can be squashed. There should be people loud and proud out there speaking that that’s not something that they believe in or support. And joining the majority when people say it’s not okay as opposed to just being silent. I mean it’s like that with anything. With any kind of injustice I feel like we see as a human race whether it’s skin color or sexual preference. Lady Gaga is obviously in the forefront of it. We’re born this way or we’re not. Join the movement!

What is your message for the girls who are struggling with an eating disorder or any body image issue? What would you like to say to them?

Eliza- I’m a huge advocate for support groups. I think that there are great one on one therapies that are available, but I think that there is such strength in groups. And there is such strengths in being able to work through the shame in relating to someone else who knows exactly what you’re feeling and exactly what you’re going through. I think that women talking to women and women befriending other women, that’s just something that is indisputably a solution and a way of healing. A way of recovering. Where they can share together and just work through the pain and shame and build each other up. Hands down I’m a supporter of that.

And it sounds like that’s what you guys are doing. You guys are creating a place and trying to be a magnet of prying young women together and going don’t be ashamed. This is okay. We’re here to support you and we’re here to tell you don’t believe the haters. Don’t believe the messages out there that are just tearing you down and killing you.

That’s exactly what we’re trying to do. We want to encourage people to share their stories and make them feel like they’re not alone. And that it’s more about inner beauty. That’s what matters, how good of a person you are on the inside makes you more beautiful than anything on the outside.

Eliza- Absolutely! Absolutely. I grew up in Boston and I remember first coming to LA and seeing so many beautiful people. And there are many people here that I think are beautiful inside and out. But it occurs to me sometimes, I see such beautiful people on the outside that don’t have like a slice of self love. And if you’re not loving yourself, you can’t be loving someone else. There’s nothing more frightening than a shell of a person. It’s so what comes through people, it’s absolutely true beauty to me. And I think to the rest of the world, whether they are in tune to it or not. It’s coming through the soul, through your heart, through your eyes.

Well you definitely have beauty on the inside, as we see with all the different projects you’re involved in. Most recently you had the ’Raise $30,000 K challenge to build a recovery center for child soldiers in Uganda’.

Eliza- Actually my mom leaves tomorrow for Uganda to go and purchase the land! We’re so excited! We’re so blown away by the support and by the fans that donated and gave me the most incredible 30th birthday present imaginable.

It’s a great project. How did the idea develop to do this and connect it to your birthday? I know your mom is a professor who used to take her students to Africa.

Eliza- Yes, she’s been teaching African Politics and International Comparative Studies for over 30 years, since before I was born. She would take groups of students to different countries usually based on a course that she taught. She also taught European and Russian Studies. We’ve traveled our whole lives but Africa always had a place in her heart. She had taught a course about child soldiers in Uganda and went to take a group of students there two summers ago and Rick and I joined the trip. It was on a rehabilitation and reintegration of former child soldiers recovering from war and young women who had been abducted and raped. It was just the most unbelievable abuse of rights. It was just astonishing. It really affected her and it really affected everyone, myself and Rick included, on that trip. We met a woman there who is from a group called THARCE-Gulu to build a center in Northern Uganda, a healing center. So we came home and we thought about ways to raise money and make it happen. As my birthday was approaching and we had just sort of gotten the number as to how much the land would cost, which was $30,000, and people were saying, ’oh it’s your golden birthday coming up. You’re turning 30 on December 30’! Somehow the 30’s were popping up and I put them all together and I thought this would be absolutely the ultimate gift. It would be to step out of myself and be able to use the compassion of a band of people and make this a reality.

And it’s amazing. It’s a very admirable thing to do.

Eliza- Thank you. It was so insane, literally that last day watching that little bar go up and up, it was so exciting! That last day when we hit the goal, I’ve never felt so peaceful and happy. It was incredible. It sort of shifted my perspective of this next part of my life of where I want the focus to be. I am so sick of focusing on me and frankly it’s kind of unavoidable in your 20’s! (Laughs) So hallelujah that I get to switch it around!

It’s such a great perspective to have, to want to help others. I feel like you feel so much better when you know you’re making a positive difference in other people’s lives. What you’re doing with this project is profound because it will affect those in Uganda for years to come.

Eliza- Thank you. Absolutely agree. Our parents hopefully teach us from when we’re young, ’you’re going to feel best, you’ll get the gift if you help someone out’. And it’s amazing of how easy it is to sort of forget that and yet it’s always there. No matter how many times you forget it, you can turn around and help someone. Or you can deliver a positive message or share with someone or just listen to someone share their story with you, it’s just the best gift there is. And it’s free.

Definitely agree! Do you have any upcoming projects coming up?

Eliza- I worked for a group in New England, for the Camp Hale Alumni Association, which is a camp for inner city boys. My three brothers had gone there my whole life and my father had gone there, I used to go as the only girl and wish and wonder why girls couldn’t go to the camp. And so I’m working to expand the camp and have a girls program there. We just threw a charity event in Boston for that. That’s a huge goal for us. To do that and be able to have summer sessions, where it’s similar to what we’re talking about now. Camp was really important to me as a kid. I did an outward bound program called Connecting with Courage when I was 11 or 12 years old. Just empowering young girls, it can make such a difference. I want to be able to do that for people that maybe can’t afford a big program. We can offer the same thing and pave the way hopefully.

Where would you say your grounded nature comes from?

Eliza- I can only imagine it’s coming from my mom. She’s been my mom and my hero. The person I’ve looked up to and the person I was raised by my whole life. And she just is the person that exudes unconditional love. She’s one of those professors that people are like oh she changed my life! For a while I think I went the opposite way because I thought I’ll never be able to be like my Mother Theresa mother! (Laughs) So I thought I’m going to be a total bad girl! And then it just got old and it didn’t fit. It didn’t feel good. I think most women and their mothers go through a few ups and downs. And it was entirely my fault. (Laughs) But then I got to come around and she was there and forgiving. And we’ve been so connected and deep down we do care about the same things. We also both realized that it isn’t just about us. We get to travel to meet women and their daughters and their mothers that have just unbelievable challenges in front of them. We just sit there and go oh my god we are so lucky and we can hopefully turn it around make it about something else.

We’re so grateful you’re a part of Team True Beauty Eliza! Thank you!

Eliza- I’m just thankful you guys asked me to be a part of this. Thank you!