'They didn't see me as a woman', says xXx star Ruby Rose on growing up gender ambiguous

Growing up a gender-fluid, childhood was no walk in the park for Ruby Rose, who has claimed that she was bullied by both girls and boys as they could not understand her orientation. The xXx: Return Of Xander Cage actress has come a long way from her early days in Melbourne, Australia and now wants to be the kind of role model she would have liked to have growing up.

"All I wanted was a boy's name growing up – Charlie, Billie, Max, Frankie. You just know my mum wanted a girly-girl princess," Rose told The Edit magazine. "Everyone had Barbies; I had Ninja Turtles and Superman... I was crazy about Archie comics. I played [football] with the boys."

But playing with the boys made her enemies with the girls. When she decided to "try the feminine thing" she got bullied by girls even when she came out as gay. "'First you want our boyfriends, now you want us' – that kind of thing. I couldn't win," she explained.

In Boys Don't Cry style, Rose shaved her head and bound her chest to look more like a boy. The transformation did not work for her either and she had to be taken to hospital after being beaten up by a group of boys. "They didn't see me as a woman," she noted.

The Orange Is The New Black actress confessed that at the time she felt like she was born in the wrong body – a view she does not continue to hold. "I'm a woman," she said. "I want to have babies one day, so I'm glad I didn't make changes earlier in my life. I want to be the person I wished was around when I was growing up."

After years spent modelling and as a MTV VJ, the 30-year-old is now juggling a number of action films. Aside from xXx, she also stars in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, and will be seen across from Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 2, and Jason Statham-starrer Meg.