Mena Suvari wrote her memoir as a way to exorcise pain from her life

She has now told People about its release feeling like she had set herself free from her hidden inner agonies: "I wrote my book because I just needed to get it out of my life, and I wanted to move forward.

"I couldn't hide anymore, and I knew that I needed to do it for myself. And after I'd finished writing the book, I got pregnant."

Mother-of-one Mena's child Christopher Alexander, who she had with husband Michael Hope - to whom she got married in 2018 - is now aged three.

She added about how she has now stopped pretending to be someone she isn't" "I just felt like I was playing a game with myself all the time: 'I'm this person. I didn't have that past, and I'm everything that you want me to be.'

"That's what my life was: 'Who do you want me to be, and how you want me to be?' That's what I learned how to do.

"And so now I'm sort of like, 'No, I'm getting to know me, and this is what I like,' and I'm learning to be okay with just learning how to accept myself.

"What's amazing is the things that have come out of that - people that have thought of me, other work that's come.

"And that was only because I had to step out of my own way. It's just about fear.

"We're so afraid that if we make this move, if we do that move, we're not going to be accepted.

"I still don't have all of those answers, but... I'd rather be free, and I'd rather have these conversations and hope that it helps somebody."