AceShowbiz - Jodie Turner-Smith used to hate herself as she posted on Instagram a throwback picture of her teenage self. Calling it "a blast from the past," the 33-year-old star revealed she despised her dark complexion when she was young because people called her ugly.

She wrote, "I'm humbled when i look at this girl. 17 year old me. not just because of how i look on the outside, but because i remember how i felt on the inside. i remember how badly i hated myself and hated the dark skin that made people call me ugly."

She opened up on her "exhausting" journey to overcoming her insecurities, "How i turned my helplessness at being unable to change my outward appearance inward, by constantly cleaving away any and all parts of myself that i was told made me unacceptable to others."

"How i changed my voice, changed my hair, became captain of this and president of that, used my intelligence to build a wall around me, spent years in the practice of bending and shaping myself into the most acceptable form of Jodie for the people around me until there was nothing of me left but hate for a person i didn't recognise and fear that i had become someone it was impossible to come back from..."

She concluded, "I am grateful for the girl in these photos and for every part of this journey. because i couldn't be me, now, if i wasn't first her, then. when you know what it feels like to hate yourself, finally loving yourself is a freedom that cannot be matched by anyone else's approval."

Jodie Turner-Smith is currently rumored to be expecting a baby with actor Joshua Jackson. If she really is pregnant, the baby will be the first child for the couple who started dating in 2018. They also sparked marriage rumors as they wore what appeared to be wedding rings.