Eiza González talks about the pressures of growing up as a Mexican teen idol

Eiza González is taking on perhaps the most prolific moment of her career. The actress has amassed incredible success and has worked with some of the most notorious filmmakers in Hollywood. González has been working hard to be in the position where she’s in, and continues to do so, always having a project in the backburner. In a new interview, González discusses her background as a Mexican teen idol and the pressures that young people face when growing up under the lens of a camera.

While speaking to the magazine L’Officiel, González talked about growing up in the public eye drawing a line between herself and some of the teens that shared her experience in another country. “I grew up in the public eye the same way that a lot of these pop culture kids did—I did it in a different country, but I did it as well—and the no-tolerance rule for mistakes at such a young age, and how hard that can be, actually dampens the desire of people to want to follow their dreams; it becomes something scary. Because I’m sure that if I’m a girl at home, and I am Selena Gomez’s biggest fan on planet Earth, but I’m seeing that she’s being dragged through the wringer, you’re going to be like, ‘That’s too scary. I don’t know if I want to do that.’”

González reveals that the addition of social media makes everything more complicated, forcing young actors to put up a facade where they must be role models for others, at the expense of their individuality and life. “We need to stop with this idea that we have to show [ourselves to] the world, and prove that we’re a role model. It doesn’t matter. The world is messy and everyone’s figuring it out as they go. You don’t have to show everything [as] positive all the time. But what you have to do is honor yourself, honor what you need, and honor your happiness,” she said.

González also discussed some of the projects that’ll be premiering in the near future, which have granted her the chance to work with directorswho’ve allowed her to push herself as an actor.

“He has allowed me to do things that no other director has ever allowed me to do,” she said of her work with Guy Ritchie, who directed her on “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” “One that I can probably mention without being a spoiler is that he allowed me [to] play a full British character, and I have to do a British accent.”