Priyanka Chopra wept when she was told her body was not “sample-sized”.
The “Fashion” actress, 40, said she cried to her singer husband Nick Jonas, 30, and her team when she was body shamed for not being a “size two”.
She said at SXSW: “Someone told me yesterday that I wasn't sample-sized... I was hurt and I discussed it with my family and I cried to my husband, and my team, and I felt really bad about the fact that I’m not sample size, and that’s a problem, apparently, and most of us are not, a sample size is size 2.”
Chopra, who had 13-month-old daughter Malti with Jonas in January last year via surrogacy, said she had taught herself to get support from people who want to “see you smile”.
She said: “I have had times when I may have said something, and it’s been misconstrued, and you see people saying the meanest and nastiest things not just about me, about my child, about my family members… And I think sometimes people forget you are even human.
“And those pressures – it’s inexplicable. I can’t explain how it feels when you are sitting down on your couch and you just feel the world coming at you, because people have forgotten that you are human.
“I think what you have to do is surround yourself with people who love you and surround yourself with people who care about you, and not about what you can bring to the table and not about what you can do for them.
“People who want to see you smile and be enriched. It doesn’t have to be a room full of people – I can count them on my hands,” she said.
But Chopra celebrated how she was paid the same as her male co-star Richard Madden, 36, on her upcoming Amazon Prime series “Citadel”.
She said: “I’ve been working in the entertainment industry for 22 years. I have done about 70-plus features, and two TV shows.
“When I did ‘Citadel’, I had pay parity with my male actor for the first time in 22 years,” Chopra said.