Fantasia Barrino, star of the new stage-to-screen adaptation of The Color Purple, has opened up about the difficulties she faced after finding fame on American Idol.
Barrino won the third season of American Idol in 2004, three years before she made her Broadway debut in The Color Purple. “It wasn’t easy,” she told PEOPLE in a new interview. “I lost a lot. I lost everything.”
The actress and singer says she faced financial hardships following her win. Her father sued in 2006 over his portrayal in her memoir, Life Is Not a Fairy Tale. She also lived through an overdose of aspirin and sleep aids in 2010.
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Many of those struggles came from being “very, very green” in the music and entertainment industry. “You have to become a businesswoman, and you link up with great business partners, but it doesn’t have a lot to do with love,” she said. “It took me a long time to figure that out.”
Barrino was only 19 when she won the career-making reality competition. Now, a mother of three, she’s starring in a film that had the second-biggest Christmas Day theatrical opening ever.
“I didn’t know anything about contracts,” she says of those early years. “I didn’t know anything about checking your money and making sure every day your stuff was where it was supposed to be. I just trusted and believed everybody that came into my life.”
Though those times were tough, Barrino sees what the lows taught her. “I’m grateful for it,” she told PEOPLE. “If I did not go through that, I wouldn’t be the woman that I am today.”
Barrino has already garnered a Golden Globe nomination for her role in The Color Purple.
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