Lily Collins struggled with eating disorder

Lily Collins battled an eating disorder as a young woman.

The 27-year-old actress is glad she has opened up about her health struggles as a teenager and insists "there is no shame" in suffering from an eating disorder.

Speaking at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah about her film 'To The Bone', she said: "This movie was really important to me to be a part of because, as a teenager, I suffered from eating disorders. This is the first time I'm talking about it. This is my moment of talking about it. It's important.

"It's really important. It's something that a lot of young women go through and there's no shame in it, and this movie is about that - it's about embracing your past and about realising it's something that doesn't define who you are, but it's about your experiences, surrounding yourself with people that support you, and about surviving and getting through it."

And Lily admits she was immediately drawn to the project after connecting with writer and director Marti Noxon.

She added to Variety: "This was something that right away when I met Marti, I completely was like, oh my god, we have to work together. We have to tell this story because it's something I think that's incredibly taboo with young men and women to talk about, especially in today's day and age where it's more and more prevalent.

"Marti was so nurturing right away to reference my experiences, but also ... in a way, I'm playing Marti's life, so I just talked to her about all her experiences and we shared a lot. I talked to the head of the UCLA department for eating disorders and spoke to medical doctors about the facts, and we visited groups of young women and heard about their stories."