Emily Atack has said she was groped by a man in a shop as a 10-year-old.
The Rivals actress said the trauma caused her to develop a “really unhealthy relationship with sex and boys”.
The 36-year-old, who found fame on The Inbetweeners at the age of 17, said she had gone on to be treated in appalling ways by older men throughout her career.
“It’s going a little bit dark, but I was sexually assaulted first of all when I was 10,” she told the How to Failpodcast, adding: “I was treated appallingly by older men from that age throughout my life.
“Lots of things happened that my parents to this day still don’t know the details of, how men have treated me and touched me and whispered things to me in my ear when people aren’t in earshot.”
Atack, who plays Sarah Stratton in Disney’s TV adaptation ofDame Jilly Cooper’s Rivals, also told Grazia: “I had a man groping me in a shop when I was 10 years old, that sort of thing kept happening.”
The actress said on the podcast that being sexually assaulted at a young age had caused her to develop a “really unhealthy relationship with sex and with boys” because she knew she was “wanted and desired by men from a really young age, sexually desired”.
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She added: “That, to me, as a child, it’s really confusing because I think I needed, I didn’t want to do the sex stuff, but I liked that feeling of feeling wanted and validated, and being called pretty, and I had crushes on older men who would then take advantage of that but then made me feel that that was a good thing.”
Atack said her famous parents, actress Kate Robbins and musician Keith Atack, had been unable to stop her sneaking out of the house as a young teenager.
“I was just out the door and I developed these sexual connections with much older men, and it was a space where, even though I hated the sexual part of it, it was a space that I felt quite powerful and not lonely,” she said.
The actor, who is engaged to Dr Alistair Garner, a nuclear scientist, previously told Grazia magazine that she had struggled with looking old for her age.
She said: “I didn’t look like all the girls in my class; I was tall, I had boobs, I had long blonde hair, I wore makeup. It was my superpower, but also something that scared me.”
Atack said her experiences as a young woman helped her to identify with her Rivals character Stratton, especially “having to lean on certain things to get what you want – your blonde hair, your flirtatious eyelashes, your sexuality – even if you’re so uncomfortable doing it”.
In 2023, Atack produced the BBC documentaryAsking For It?,which explored a rise in online sexual harassment.
She has also fronted the “I’m asking for it” campaign, which aims to legally enshrine the need for mutual consent before sex.
