From TGIF to NSFW: 'Boy Meets World' star Maitland Ward talks breaking free from Hollywood for porn
Baring it all isn’t new territory for Maitland Ward, but this time she’s baring her soul in her debut memoir “Rated X:
How Porn Liberated Me From Hollywood” (Atria Books, 256 pp., out now).
Ward spent her late adolescence on many people’s television screens, playing Jessica Forrester on the soap opera “The Bold and The Beautiful”
and later Rachel McGuire on '90s teen sitcom “Boy Meets World.”
But coming of age in front of the camera came at a price, says Ward, who felt boxed in by her former roles as she got older.
“It was like I was in their television as this person that I always had to be for the rest of my life," Ward says. “And eventually I had to just crack the screen and get out.”
Now in her 40s, Ward has reinvented herself as an award-winning porn star.
Not content with playing “the mom next door,” Ward took control of her career by embracing her sexuality, something she was constantly warned against.
“I was told over and over again by publicists and by people in Hollywood, ‘No one wants to see you sexy,’ ” Ward says.
“It’s been so liberating these past few years to really be myself, to show people who I am and defy what Hollywood’s expectations were of me.”
Ward shares her journey of going from TGIF to NSFW in “Rated X."