Kelly Marie Tran has spoken out about online bullying for the first time since she deleted her Instagram posts earlier this year.

The 29-year-old star of Star Wars: The Last Jedi has revealed the extent of the abuse she received in an op-ed for the New York Times.

“Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories,” Tran wrote.

In the piece, she explains that she stopped speaking Vietnamese at the age of nine because she was tired of being mocked and that society continued to reinforce the idea that she could never be a hero but just a supporting character.

“I had been brainwashed into believing that my existence was limited to the boundaries of another person’s approval,” she wrote. “I had been tricked into thinking that my body was not my own, that I was beautiful only if someone else believed it, regardless of my own opinion. I had been told and retold this by everyone: by the media, by Hollywood, by companies that profited from my insecurities, manipulating me so that I would buy their clothes, their makeup, their shoes, in order to fill a void that was perpetuated by them in the first place.”

She stated that her experience is common for a person of color growing up in a white-dominated world and for a woman in a society that still prioritizes men. But Tran wants to use her position to make a difference.

“I know that I now belong to a small group of privileged people who get to tell stories for a living, stories that are heard and seen and digested by a world that for so long has tasted only one thing,” she wrote. “I know how important that is. And I am not giving up.”

After Tran deleted her posts this summer, a pro-“straight white male hero” group took credit as they continued to rally against “forced diversity”. The same group also tried to launch an unsuccessful campaign against Black Panther. Both films have made over $1.3bn each to date.

Tran will next be seen in Facebook Watch’s first major series, the dark comedy Sorry for Your Loss with Elizabeth Olsen and Janet McTeer. She will then be reprising her role of Rose Tico in the next Star Wars film.