Fearne Cotton 'doesn't care' what people say about her after 'going to hell and back'

Fearne Cotton says she no longer cares what people say about her after being "misrepresented" in the press earlier in her career.

The presenter began her career when she was just a teenager, going on to become a prominent face on CBBC in the early 00s before moving on to mainstream programming for the BBC.

But Cotton says she faced a lot of scrutiny in the media early in her career which affected her mental health and how she saw herself.

Read more: Phillip Schofield ‘still confused’ about who he is

The 39-year-old told the Big Issue: "It was really intense in my 20s. I had a very unhealthy relationship with the press.

"You feel misrepresented and misunderstood, which is a really horrible feeling. And you lose your sense of who you are. You’re so busy trying to be what everybody else wants you to be, and to avoid being attacked.”

Now, Cotton says people "can say what they want" as she "doesn't care".

"I’ve been to hell and back, so now it’s about being me and if people don’t like that, it’s really none of my business. My business is to do what makes me tick. I don’t go anywhere exciting or glamorous," she shared.

While addressing her battle with depression, Cotton added that into her 30s she felt as thought she didn't belong in the professional spaces she occupied but that her podcast Happy Place has finally given her confidence.

Last year, the mother-of-two spoke on how her mental health suffered in her twenties and that she'd struggled with bulimia, but that she had now recovered.

Cotton wed husband Jesse Wood in 2014 and the pair are parents to two children, Rex, seven, and Honey, five.

She is also stepmother to Wood's two children from his his marriage.

Watch: Fearne Cotton lifts the lid on her marriage to Jesse Wood