Honey Ross: Overcoming Toxic Diets, Bullying, and Trauma as the Daughter of Showbiz Royalty Jonathan Ross

WITH a Hollywood blockbuster starring Sydney Sweeney in the works, a hit podcast and a rumoured marriage proposal on the cards, life is looking rather great for the daughter of Jonathan Ross.

But flick back just 15 years and , then 14, was blighted by , riddled with self-hatred and, heartbreakingly, even asked for a personal trainer as her only birthday present.

Honey Kinny Ross has battled ‘nepo baby’ snubs, body image issues and the pressures of fame Credit: instagram/honeykinny She, alongside parents Jonathan Ross and Jane Goodman, have battled with their weight Credit: Rex

With one of the nation’s most beloved , legendary , a plush £4million London mansion to grow-up in, enviable holidays at their Florida mansion and glitzy red carpet events to attend, many would have thought she had it all.

But during those years growing up as ‘showbiz royalty’ she still battled a host of personal issues, with her childhood tarnished by a mix of “truly hating myself” , “a myriad of mental health issues” and the challenges of .

For all of her ex-BBC star dad’s fame and legion of showbiz royalty pals, she couldn’t be shielded from the “hundreds of negative comments” she read about herself online that further damaged her “already wilted self-esteem”.

Then, aged 20, two years of her life were “ruined” after she suffered a sexual attack. It was an incident so deeply traumatic that she “didn’t think I’d make it to being this happy young woman” that we see today.

Honey, who labels herself a , now embraces her curves and celebrates them, campaigning and often sharing revealing photos of her body to her 57,700 Instagram followers.

She’s also in love and is clearly adored by Welsh podcaster and , 40, who regularly leaves gushing comments like “such a beauty”, “you are perfect” and “perfect girl” under her posts.

Now 28, couldn’t be more different from those dark days.

But it’s taken a lot of soul searching, “regular therapy”, “very supportive parents” and crucially, learning to love herself and her body.

“When I think about my relationship with my body growing up, my heart truly breaks for my past self,” she told DAZED magazine a few years ago.

“I put her through so much s***, crash diets, cruel words and even occasionally self-harm. I just want to hold teenage me and tell her that she deserves the world.

“But I try and think about it now that I’m correcting the mistakes my past-self made and treating my body with kindness.”

The youngest of three siblings, Honey is undoubtedly the most well-known of the Ross’s brood.

She has appeared on Celebrity Gogglebox and a podcast with her dad, regularly courted the press and is working in the writing room for TV and film, like her highly-talented mum.

The other kids are somewhat more hidden. , 35, has battled long-term, debilitating health issues that often require her to use a wheelchair.

The disability ambassador has fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) – which cause severe fatigue, chronic pain, a rapidly increasing heart rate and faintness, among other symptoms.

And , 32, who his dad cheekily described as having “the longest hair in the family and [is] largely unwashed”, is rarely seen at big events and doesn’t even have a social media account.

He has appeared on Celebrity Gogglebox but his profession is not known. Last year, Harvey got engaged and, according to Jonathan, plans to start a family with his photographer fiancée, Muna Silver.

The Rosses, collectively believed to be worth £30million, have long been a fascination of the public due to Jonathan’s fame but also their eccentric dress sense – that often saw them don bold, bright colours and Halloween-inspired outfits.

“People have always called us weird, this quirky, strange Addams family,” Honey previously told The Sun, but said it brought them closer. They were “a united front” and supported one another.

But that didn’t lessen the sting from online hatred, especially targeted toward the Ross’s youngest because of her naturally curvier frame.

By the age of 12, Honey was already a size 14, and her fixation with her weight intensified after reading the disturbing comments – which gave her a “real insight into a dark side of human nature” – underneath photos from the fancy events the family attended.

Last August, Honey went public with boyfriend Gav Murphy, who is 11 years her senior Credit: instagram/honeykinny The screenwriter is a body image activist and calls out ‘fatphobia’ online Credit: Instagram

She said: “This is a world in which people don’t care if you are a kid. That’s when I started to realise my body wasn’t one that was massively desired by society.

“I was a kid – I was a half-baked human being, and I had all my worst fears about how people thought I was hideous written down.

“I’d say, ‘Mummy, a man in the middle of nowhere is calling me a hog on the internet’. They’d say, ‘Who cares? Honey, you’re so smart. You’re so cool. Who gives a s***?’

Unhappy with her appearance, Honey says she asked her parents for help and says they “presented me with diets”. She now considers weight loss plans “insanely toxic” and insists they “do not work”.

By 13, Honey had enrolled on the Weight Watchers alongside her mum, and a year later, she asked for a personal trainer for her birthday.

In the years that followed, she tried a low carb keto and other plans, in addition to keeping an “obsessive food diary” – a fixation that she says led to “bad dysmorphia”.

“I became convinced my friends wouldn’t be able to wrap their arms around me to hug me because I was so big,” Honey told Loose Women in 2020.

Among the moments that led to her rejecting diets for good was noticing her treatment after becoming “very thin”.

People who had never given her a second glance were suddenly “so nice to me and flirting with me”.

“I was f***ing furious,” she added. “I’m the same person I was a month ago – this funny, nice girl – and you didn’t see that when I was a stone heavier? It made me see everything really clearly.”

Prior to that revelation, Honey had been rejected by her co-star in a school play who “wasn’t brave enough” to be with a fuller woman like her and instead “started dating my thin best friend”.

She recalls her calorie-restricted years as “angry, hungry and anxious” times that stripped her of her personality – someone “funny, kind and [with] loads going for me”. The epiphanies set her on “a course of aggressive self-love”.

“I realised me and body are going to be spending the rest of my life together, we might as well f***ing love each other,” she told DAZED.

Growing up, Honey says she felt like one of The Addams Family Credit: Getty – Contributor This photo at Latitude Festival, alongside other gushing posts, has sparked proposal rumours Credit: instagram/honeykinny

But that progress was nearly derailed just before Honey’s 21st birthday, when she suffered a sexual attack. She has since bravely written about how it “really ruined” two years of her life.

Under a 2019 selfie, she candidly wrote: “Even though I’ve relived it every day since the day it happened – every day the pain gets less and I feel lighter from the trauma.”

Honey’s self-love journey continued in the years that followed – along with a steady stream of photos showcasing her curves, but not without further slings.

In 2020, a poolside photo of her was removed from Instagram for ‘violating community guidelines’, leading her to rage online: “Why don’t you just say you hate fat bodies?”

But Honey pushed through with the full support of her parents and has batted off claims of her being a “nepo baby”, which she says means she has to work extra hard or “everyone will hate me”.

In 2024, Jonathan told The Times : “Did I talk to her about the dangers of being in the spotlight? Absolutely not! She’s a smart adult, old enough to make her own decisions and her own mistakes.”

It’s perhaps Honey’s self-love and confidence in her own skin that led her into the sights of boyfriend Gav, whom she was first pictured publicly with a year ago at screening for film Caught Stealing.

And sparks are now flying, amid speculation that he could soon propose after love-filled posts about her, gaining the strong approval of her family, whom he has holidayed with, and a cheeky photo online.

Last month at Latitude Festival, the couple posed as a bride and groom in a face-in-the-hole board and shared plenty more loved-up snaps. A pal commented on one that they were “a divine couple”.

Honey’s career equally seems to be going swimmingly. She’s clearly got her mum’s talent for screenwriting and dad’s broadcasting abilities.

She hosts The Reel Talk podcast, reviewing film and TV shows with Jonathan, and has appeared on Celebrity Gogglebox alongside him.

Honey also helped to write scripts for the much-lauded 2022 TV adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s bestselling memoir Everything I Know About Love and comedy material for The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year.

Boyfriend Gav often gushes that Honey is his ‘perfect girl’ online Credit: instagram/honeykinny She co-hosts the Reel Talk podcast with dad Jonathan Credit: Instagram/honeykinny

Now she’s joining mum film screenwriter Jane – famed for penning films The Kingsman series, recent X-Men flicks, Kickass and Stardust – on new sci-fi hit Barbarella, starring Sydney Sweeney.

In a recent Instagram post, reflecting on her life, Honey wrote: “Maybe it doesn’t have to be all flop or thrive, maybe it can just be.”

But judging by her life now, after overcoming a plethora of hurdles, it seems she’s certainly thriving and could finally be enjoying some of the best moments of her life.