Amanda Bynes is officially ready for the spotlight again.
On Monday, Paper magazine revealed their winter cover featuring the former child star, all grown up – Bynes is now 32 – and showing off a more refined image. In one shot, Bynes wears jeans and a blazer; several photos show her in high-necked fashion-forward tops.
The curated images are a far cry from Bynes' turbulent 20s: After bizarre bouts of tweeting and public appearances, she suffered a public breakdown in 2013 and was placed in a treatment facility under an involuntary psychiatric hold. Bynes’ mom was then granted temporary conservatorship over her.
PHOTOS: Amanda Bynes through the years
The former "All That" star has since quit acting, sobered up and spent the past few years quietly studying fashion at Los Angeles' Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising.
Now, she's getting candid about what those chaotic years were like. "I started smoking marijuana when I was 16," Bynes tells Paper. "Even though everyone thought I was the 'good girl,' I did smoke marijuana from that point on."
Then she tried harder drugs. "Later on it progressed to doing molly and ecstasy," she said. "(I tried) cocaine three times but I never got high from cocaine. I never liked it. It was never my drug of choice."
But Adderall had a different appeal. While she was making "Hairspray," Bynes recalls "reading an article in a magazine that (called Adderall) 'the new skinny pill' and they were talking about how women were taking it to stay thin. I was like, 'Well, I have to get my hands on that.' " Bynes faked symptoms of ADD and acquired a prescription from a psychiatrist.
After "Easy A" came out in 2010, Bynes was upset with how she looked in the film. "I saw it and I was convinced that I should never be on camera again and I officially retired on Twitter, which was, you know, also stupid."
But without a sense of purpose, Bynes "got really into my drug usage" and "was just stuck at home, getting high, watching TV and tweeting."
Today, Bynes says she's been sober for about four years. "Those days of experimenting are long over. I'm not sad about it and I don't miss it because I really feel ashamed of how those substances made me act."
And yes, she wants to act again. "I have no fear of the future," she says. "I've been through the worst and came out the other end and survived it, so I just feel like it's only up from here."
