Kerry Washington joined the Oscars festivities by rubbing elbows with her fellow movie stars at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party Sunday, but the photos of her arrival have drawn concern from fans.
The actress appeared on the red carpet Feb. 24 after Hollywood’s biggest night and posed in a Schiaparelli couture dress while debuting a pixie cut accented by side-swept bangs.
But her followers were more concerned about her apparent weight loss, which stole the attention away from her overall appearance.
Kerry Washington attends the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscars party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on Feb. 24, 2019, in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo: John Shearer/Getty Images)
“I hope she isn’t sick Lord😩😩😩”
“What happened to her? Doesn’t look alright to me.”
“She’s looking anorexic. Like someone starving herself.”
“Wow. Is she sick. Cos she looks like she’s battling something. I pray it isn’t cancer. I hope it’s just weight loss.”
“Is everything OK sis?”
While any possible health woes have not been confirmed, some fans pointed out the star has struggled with an eating disorder in the past, which she opened up about to Essence magazine in 2009.
For years during her time in college, Washington described having an abusive relationship with meals and exercise. She’d binge on food and then spend hours in the gym to undo the effects.
“I used food as a way to cope. It was my best friend,” she said, admitting she’d hide in her dorm room and consume entire pizzas, whole jars of peanut butter, pints of ice cream and plates of french fries.
“I’d eat anything and everything, sometimes until I passed out,” she said. “But then, because I had this personality that was driven toward perfectionism, I would tell people I was at the library, but instead go to the gym and exercise for hours and hours and hours. Keeping my behavior a secret was painful and isolating. There was a lot of guilt and a lot of shame.”
Washington ultimately sought help when a dance teacher approached her after noticing something wasn’t right. The actress, who would go on to star in the hit ABC series “Scandal” and follow it with a stint on Broadway in the play “American Son,” began going to therapy.
“Therapy helped me realize that maybe it’s okay for me to communicate my feelings. Instead of literally stuffing them down with food, maybe it’s okay for me to express myself,” the actress said after noting she also started meditating and seeing a nutritionist.
“Learning how to love myself and my body is a lifelong process. But I definitely don’t struggle the way I used to,” she said at the time.
