Dove Cameron would find it "hard" to be on Disney Channel these days.

She told People: "The making of those movies definitely made me who I am. It trained me to be an incredibly hard worker because those films - even though they're children's films - they were so hard to make, they were so hard to make.".

"I think even as an adult now, I would go back and be like, wow, this is f****** hard."

However, the 'Boyfriend' singer ultimately found it "a joy" to play the daughter of 'Sleeping Beauty' villain Maleficent across three films within the franchise and found it all to be one of the "most formative" experiences in her early career as an actress.

She said: "But it's a joy. We were safe. We were surrounded by people who wanted us to win, and we were there to explore and make mistakes, and it was just an invaluable experience. I really look back on those three summers [...] as some of the most formative in my learning how to be a professional."

Since her Disney days, the 'Hairspray Live!' star has appeared in television series such as 'Schmigadoon!' and will soon be seen in the upcoming series 'Obsession', and admitted that she just wants to inspire "self-expression" as she moves forward within her career.

She added: "I just really think that I want people to find themselves. I want people to feel self-expressed. I want people to find joy, and I want people to every day wake up knowing that the possibilities are truly endless.

"I've done a lot of things on instinct, and I've done a lot of things because they felt scary or exciting, or maybe even the wrong thing at the moment. But then they turned out to be the best thing because they were the thing that I knew that I felt pulled and drawn to do."