Keke Palmer's family struggled to relate to her after they were "all being traumatised" by her fame.
The 32-year-old star first broke out with the likes of Akeelah and the Bee and Nickelodeon sitcom True Jackson, VP as a teenager, and she and her family struggled to adjust to her rising profile in Hollywood.
Speaking to Whoopi Goldberg at the Tribeca Festival's Storytellers series, she said: "I remember it was just nobody could relate to me, and the thing about my family is my family has always been so awesome, but there was a period where we were all being traumatised by fame.
"They had a more relatable experience to the trauma of the fame than I did, right? Because I was the star. They were the people in the star shadow."
Keke explained how her family found it "easier" to "understand each other than it was for them to understand" the actress and her success.
She recalled: "They're still trying to understand and metabolise their very crazy experience while I'm experiencing what it's like for everybody around me to be now affected by everybody's perceiving me when really I'm the same I've always been.
"And I just was so sad, you guys. I really was so sad. I was so sad that I wished I could feel the pain of it because it was not physical.
"It was so deep in my soul and in my heart that I felt numb or something like that because it was like no way to get it out of me."
Keke made her on screen acting debut in 2004's Barbershop 2: Back In Business, and by the end of the decade she was a regular in film and TV.
More recently, she has appeared in the likes of Nope, Good Fortune and I Love Boosters, as well as reigniting her music career.
Her family, which includes parents Sharon and Larry Palmer and siblings Loreal and twins Lawrence and Lawrencia, actually relocated to Los Angeles from Illinois to support Keke's career.
Now, she shares her LA home with her two sisters, their children, and her own three-year-old son Leodis.
While Keke split from Leo’s father, fitness instructor Darius Jackson, in October 2023, she recently admitted she’s got a “village” of people she can turn to for help as and when she needs it.
She told Rolling Stone magazine: “Me and my sisters live together. And then my mom is always there, and I also have supportive nannies.
“The village is large. I don’t know what I would be able to do without all the help that I have.”
