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Clueless star Elisa Donovan says film helped her ‘stay on the recovery path’ from eating disorder

Actor suffered from anorexia when the movie was filming

Clémence Michallon
New York City
Friday 04 June 2021 16:46 EDT
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Clueless film trailer

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Clueless star Elisa Donovan says starring in the iconic film helped her “stay on the recovery path” from an eating disorder.

The actor has been open about suffering from anorexia at the time Clueless was filming in the 1990s.

“I certainly kept any of my eating disorder issues to myself because I wasn't even able to handle them myself,” she told Yahoo! Entertainment in a recent interview. “So I certainly wasn't sharing them with anyone else.”

Donovan explained she now looks at the work she did around that time “as kind of a help to me”.

“Because I was most concerned about losing my job,” she added. “So that initially is what helped me to stay on the recovery path. While that's no recipe for true recovery, but it helped me to stay on there until I got to the place where I realised that I really wanted my life back.”

The teen comedy came out in 1995 and has earned a cult following. It also stars Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, and Paul Rudd.

Donovan went on to portray Morgan Cavanaugh in Sabrina the Teenage Witch in the early 2000s.

Her memoir, Wake Me When You Leave: Love and Encouragement via Dreams from the Other Side, is being published on 8 June.

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