HOLLY Willoughby has admitted that she “waters down” her opinions in a bid to swerve cancel culture as she opened up about her fear of sparking controversy.
The 40-year-old star is the darling of daytime TV, delighting viewers across the country as co-host of This Morning since 2009.
But it turns out that there is a lot more to the blonde beauty than she allows to be shown on the telly – with the mother-of-three “simplifying” herself so not to rock the boat.
Holly explained: “To fit in with other people’s expectations of me, I have ended up simplifying myself and swallowing my voice so that I stay in the pigeonhole I’m expected to sit in.
“This can mean watering myself down. The moment you have an opinion or come down hard on one side of a debate or the other, in somebody’s eyes it will be seen as controversial or wrong.”
The TV favourite continues in her new book Reflections: “I err on the side of caution because I want to go home and be a mum and focus on other things in my life.
“To go out on a limb and to speak your own truth can be scary, so it’s easier just to use other people’s words and thoughts and opinions.
“But every time you do that, you lose sight of your own. You don’t know what you want anymore. You don’t know how you feel.”
Holly shares 12-year-old Harry, 10-year-old Belle, and seven-year-old Chester with husband Dan Baldwin, and is fiercely protective of them thanks to her career in the limelight.
Earlier this week, the star tickled fans when she candidly confessed her “t**s are around her knees” and face is “sagging” in a podcast with Fearne Cotton.
She explained at the time: “We are heading towards that kind of menopausal time, skin is changing, hair is changing, body’s changing – even having had a baby the shape of your body completely changes.
“I think that it’s really important in those moment rather than look down and go, ‘Oh my god, look at everything changing, I’m getting old, I’m getting more wrinkled. Oh my God, my t**s are around my knees.’
“Instead of looking down, you’ve sort of got to look up with it and go, ‘God, my body was able to carry a baby and my boobs breastfed three children and they were fine’.
“…You got to go, ‘Yes my face is starting to sag and my eyes are blood shot and the rest of it’, but ‘I’m healthy and I’m ok and getting older is a privilege because not everyone else gets to be here’.”
