Reese Witherspoon, who began her acting career as a 15-year-old with an appearance in "The Man in the Moon," is opening up about her experience as a child actress.

In an interview with the Vanity Fair for its April issue, Reese Witherspoon revealed that "bad things" happened to her when she was a child working in an "adult world."

"Bad things happened to me. I was assaulted, harassed. It wasn't isolated," the actor-producer said.

The 43-year-old continued: "I recently had a journalist ask me about it. She said, 'Well, why didn't you speak up sooner?' And I thought, that's so interesting to talk to someone who experienced those things and then judge them for the way they decide to speak about them."

The "Morning Show" actress added that the journalist had labelled her "selfish" for not bringing up the issue sooner.

"You tell your story in your own time when you're ready. But the shame that she tried to put on me was unreal, and then she wrote about how selfish I was for not bringing it up sooner," she said.

The "Little Fires Everywhere" star, who has been one of the celebrities vocal about the #MeToo movement, added that there wasn't a platform like this back then when she was struggling as a child in the industry.

"There wasn't a public reckoning 25 years ago when this stuff happened to me. There wasn't a forum to speak about it either," the mother-of-three said.

Lauding the positive impact that social media has created in this society, Witherspoon said that it "has created a new way for people to express themselves that I didn't have. That's the great strength in power and numbers. I think we have a lot of judgment and that's unfortunate because we're all tenderfooted in these new times."

Reese Witherspoon
Reese Witherspoon wants women to be more ambitious without feeling guilty Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

The actress, who has been an important voice in combating gender-pay disparity, also opened up about the lack of women behind the camera and said: "I can remember being in pictures in which I was the only woman on the set and there would be 150 men. Maybe there would be a couple of women in wardrobe. I remember when I was a kid I would find them and cling to them."