'I was told I'd never succeed because I'm autistic. This is what I want parents to know.'

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From the very beginning, Chloe Hayden felt like she'd crash-landed on an alien planet. The world around her felt loud and confusing.

Today she's an actor, bestselling author and motivational speaker. But her early years were anything but easy.

By the time she was 13, Chloe had attended 10 different schools.

"Being diagnosed as autistic as a 13-year-old girl was really scary in some ways and really validating in others," Chloe said on Mamamia's She Built That podcast.

Watch: She Built That. Chloe Hayden. Post continues below.

"Growing up in a really tiny country town, autism wasn't really something that people knew about, and when they saw me, they definitely didn't see what their expectation of autism was. And that made being autistic feel somehow even more isolating."

As she powerfully shared in her Ted Talk, when she told her friends she was autistic, they all left her because they didn't want to "catch it."

So she started an anonymous blog under the name Princess Aspien, hoping maybe — just maybe — someone out there would understand.

To her surprise, thousands of people did.

"I wasn't expecting people to see themselves in me. I was hoping to see myself in other people," Chloe explained. "I was desperately reaching out, desperate to find one person who made me feel like I wasn't from an alien planet and that I was supposed to be here.

"And many, many people reached out and responded to my blog, and the rest is history.

"But that initial realisation that if I was from an alien planet, there was millions of people out there that were from the same planet, was instrumental in my growth and instrumental in my understanding that I was supposed to be here and that I was supposed to exist."

Listen to Chloe's full story on She Built That. Post continues below.

Finding her calling in the spotlight.

"Growing up, I always knew that I wanted to do something in the entertainment space. I wanted to perform and play pretend, because, weirdly, by playing pretend, I felt more myself than I did any other time," she said.

"There's just something so wonderful for me, as a neurodivergent person, where the lines are written for me, my emotions are written for me. I don't have to play this game and figure out what I'm supposed to be or how other people are expecting me to be. I just get to do what the words on the paper say and play pretend. And there's something so oddly freeing about doing that."

Making history on screen.

In 2021, at age 24, Chloe landed a lead role as autistic teen Quinni on Netflix's Heartbreak High. Working closely with the directors, she helped shape Quinni's character, ensuring she was real, honest, and nothing like the stereotypes she'd seen growing up.

"I knew the second that I saw Quinni's character, that she was mine," she recalled.

"When I got the job, I had discussions with the producers and the directors and told them how important it was to me that Quinni wasn't coded autistic because we have enough coded characters, we need to see an actual real-life person who is autistic on screen," she explained.

Her performance earned her an AACTA Award and a Logie nomination. She made history as the first openly Autistic Actress in Australia, but more importantly, she has helped thousands of neurodivergent young people who had felt invisible.

"I was really lucky to be able to help create this character that we know and that we love today," she said.

"But we also had the most incredible autism consultants and Quinni was written by an autistic person, and I think it shows the importance of representation, not just in front of the camera, but behind the camera, to make sure that experiences and the characters that we are seeing are a real version of a person, and that real people can look at these characters and think, I see myself."

A message for parents.

Today, Chloe is a role model for kids everywhere. She's shown that you don't have to fit in to make a difference. In fact, it's the people who stand out, who dare to be themselves, who change the world.

Her message for parents is powerful and clear:

"I wish that I could go back and tell 13-year-old Chloe, or even younger than that, and tell her that she has got such an incredibly bright future.

"What I want every young person to know that has ever felt different is their brain is exactly how it's supposed to be."

Chloe believes in the power of dreaming big, despite what others might say about limitations.

"I've always seen dreams as you need to dream as big as you possibly can, because everything that I am currently living and doing was beyond what expectations were for me, but I dreamed for it, and it happened."

"People like me have existed for as long as humankind has, and they will exist for as long as humankind will. It is so important for people to be able to see themselves and to be able to have an understanding that their brain is supposed to be here and that they are supposed to exist, and that community and that social aspect of being able to find that is, is life-changing," Chloe said.

"This might seem naive to say, but I do truly believe that everything happens for a reason, and if I could go back in time and take away little Chloe's pain, I would in a heartbeat. But I can't do that, and so I have to believe that the pain that I went through growing up made me the person that I am today, and gave me the opportunity and the life experience to be able to perform."

Feature Image: Instagram @chloeshayden