America Ferrera: I used to cry at my reflection

She felt like a real-life Ugly Betty

Tuesday, 4 September 2007

Ugly Betty star America Ferrera admits that as a teenager she felt so ugly, she would cry herself to sleep.

‘I’d look in the mirror and weep, thinking I was too fat,’ she recalls.

‘I wanted to be one of Charlie’s Angels but I couldn’t fit into size zero leather trousers. I was waiting to turn into a swan.’

America's parents were immigrants from Honduras, Central America, which made her feel out of place growing up in the US.

‘I struggled because I was different and isolated. I didn’t know where I belonged,’ she says.

The 23-year-old felt especially insecure when it came to members of the opposite sex.

‘I had a huge crush on a boy, but he told me he liked my best friend more because she was paler,' she tells Sunday magazine. 'It was then I began to feel different.’

Luckily America has come to her senses and realised that she is hot stuff.

'Today I feel beautiful,' she smiles, 'far from the ugly duckling I appear on screen.'