Myolie Wu might have looked like she had it all when she was with TVB, but a recent interview revealed that the 41-year-old was far from happy during her years with the Hongkong broadcaster.

The actress was one of TVB's most popular and in-demand actresses and had starred in many hit drams, including Curse of the Royal Harem and Ghetto Justice. When she left the company in 2015 after 16 years there as an artiste, she explained that it was because she wanted to focus on her career in China.

Little did everyone know that it was also 'cos she wanted out of the toxic environment.

Myolie shared, “I wasn’t happy when I was filming. I wasn’t enjoying myself because I was anxious all the time, and I was mildly depressed. I couldn’t eat nor sleep well. The only things people talked about were how well my dramas were doing, judging my acting skills and claiming that I was arrogant.”

She was so busy that she would only see her family once a year even though all of them lived in Hongkong at that time. I was filming dramas non-stop. Even when I had time off, all I wanted to do was to sleep. I didn't want to meet anyone, she said. I felt like I was a racehorse with blinkers on. I had to sprint towards the finish line while focusing only on my work.

This constant pressure surrounded her for a decade, and it didn’t help that there was no avenue for her to vent her frustrations. She continued, “I didn’t have time for friends, family or any other outlet at the time. It was only after those ten years did I slowly realise that the money and status to slow down and give myself space to breathe.”

While she was at TVB, Myolie dated fellow actor Bosco Wong for eight years, and tearfully announced their breakup in 2012. At the time, netizens put the blame on Bosco as he was romantically linked with his co-stars on multiple occasions. She’s said to have taken the breakup especially hard and took years to heal her broken heart.

In the same year that she left TVB, Myolie also met her husband businessman Philip Lee, whom she fell in love with at first sight. She gushed: “He’s exactly the type of man that I’d fall for. He’s very upright and pure (…) He proposed to me after we dated for three months, and I said yes because I knew we would be able to stay together. Both of us were very sure of that.”