VARIETY – Alyssa Milano refuses to allow stress to take control of her life. Since she was 11 years old, the actor has faced the pressures of show business — and she says she had little or no guidance on how to handle it for four decades.

Now, the actor is sharing her personal experiences and championing the American Heart Association’s initiative to inform the public about chronic stress management and the impact of poor mental health on physical health.

“I can only imagine — and being through the amount of therapy that I’ve been through in my life — how scared [that] little girl was,” says Milano in a video interview with Variety, while reflecting on her “Who’s the Boss?” years from 1984 to 1992.

As a child actor, she says she had a “really good support system” of family and castmates, but she nevertheless lacked the tools to address her chronic stress and mental health. “I think a lot of those uncomfortable feelings that every child has [were] squashed and pushed down, and [I was] made to feel like I didn’t have the time to feel those things as a working child,” says Milano, who penned a 2018 op-ed about her anxiety disorder that she expanded upon in her 2021 memoir “Sorry Not Sorry.”

By her mid-20s, Milano did 40 episodes of “Melrose Place” and then booked the supernatural series “Charmed,” which went on to become a hit and solidified her stardom. “‘Charmed’ was a very exciting time for me,” says Milano.
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