Molly Ringwald found fame to be "really overwhelming and scary" in her teenage years.

The 56-year-old actress became known around the world when she began working with John Huges on films such as 'Sixteen Candles' and 'The Breakfast Club' in the 1980s but admitted that the "level" of notoriety that came with that sort of success "changed" who she was a person.

Speaking on the 'Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky' podcast, she said: "I've never known a world where I haven't been a little famous. At a certain point, then I became really, really famous.

"When you're on the cover of TIME Magazine, I think when it gets to that point, then it becomes a level of fame that I, personally, don't feel that comfortable with.

"Even though I was happy with the movies that I was doing and I loved the work of actually doing it but all the fame and the notoriety outside of that was really overwhelming and scary.

"It changed me, a bit.

"Maybe this is just who I am but there was a part of it where I became very closed and very self-protective in a way that a lot of people misinterpreted.

"People thought that I was aloof or stuck up, and it wasn't, it was fear and being very self-protective.

"This was when I was a teenager."

The former child star recalled a "terrifying" incident during her younger years involving paparazzi and admitted that even all this time later, she still gets scared whenever she goes to pose for pictures on a red carpet. early

She added: "I was chased by the paparazzi and they trapped me in a revolving door in a hotel. And you know how disorientating the flashes are. But then I was also in a revolving door that just kept turning and turning and turning.

"That was terrifying for me. Still to this day, when I go to a red carpet event or something, and there's the flash, my heart starts to race. And I get scared. I've done it enough now, nothing bad is gonna happen. It's just people taking my picture but there was just something really frightening for me at that age because I was still, like, a baby."