As Lea Michele showcased her slimmer-than-ever figure, insider claim she’s tormented by body demons
Her wholesome character Rachel Berry rises at dawn to run on her treadmill in pursuit of perfection, and Glee star Lea Michele is believed to be equally determined in real life.
In the 18 months since she found fame on Glee, 5th 2in Lea has dropped to a slender size 6- shedding more than a stone- and the 24-year-old actress insists it’s all down to her new healthy vegan diet.
However, friends fear that the star’s long-running battle with her body demons and the pressure she feels to conform to the Hollywood stereotype could be behind the dramatic weight loss she has undergone since the show launched in September 2009.
“Lea is always comparing herself to other actresses and she feels that she is under huge pressure to diet all the time,” said a source who, like many of Lea’s friends, fears the star is overdoing it.
Now Lea, who is dating actor Theo Stockman, has cut all meat and dairy o of her diet. She also practises Bikram yoga every day- which she finds “calming”- as well trail running, hiking and rock climbing.
But Lea admits that she often feels like the odd one out:
“Sometimes I can’t help but feel insecure here (in Hollywood), it really plays with your head,” said the actress, who has now confessed to being unhappy with her looks for years, especially as she struggled to make it on screen.
“I was told by agents and casting directors that I wasn’t right for TV. I was always told I wasn’t right for TV. I was always told I was too ethic or not pretty enough or too much this or not enough of that,” she said.
Lea grew up New Jersey as an only child to her mum, Edith, an Italian American, and dad, Marc, who’s Spanish/Sephardic Jewish. She struggled to fit in at school.
“I grew up in a community where what I looked like wasn’t considered beautiful,” she said.
Pals say Lea is also haunted by memories of being bullied over the size of her nose as a child, and being rejected at auditions because of the way she looked. And friends are also concerned she will be tempted to take her transformation too far and go under the knife.
“Everyone’s worried she may well to surgery, which would be a huge shame because she’s such a beautiful girl”, revealed a source close to the star. “She looks amazing but complains there are parts of her body she doesn’t like, particularly the size of her nose and her boobs.
“She could well get a couple of things done-that would be awful because she’s stunning just the way she is.”
Lea once joked she was the only girl in her school year not to have a nose job and she has also hit back at the running joke on Glee about the size of her breasts. The actress confessed: “I mean, they’re not that big but they always talk about how small they are.”
Insider also says that she worries about her outer thigh area and could be tempted to use Cynosure-Triplex laser to contour her already amazing figure.
We think Lea looks incredible on the red carpet. Let’s just hope she can finally put her demons to be and embrace her beauty.
‘I desperately wanted to keep my marriage together, but I was working long hours and, with his career, we hardly saw each other.’
Charlotte discovered two years ago that her husband was seeing someone else. ‘To this day, I don’t know who it was, but I presume it was someone he met while he was out partying,’ she says.‘Our split was acrimonious and left me feeling very scarred and hurt. For a long time, I felt so weak and destroyed by what happened.
‘But I wanted to salvage something from the wreckage of this relationship. I didn’t want that time in my life to have been pointless, so I decided that the “vengeance” I would take would be to re-invent myself.
‘I hated my face? Fix it. I hated my breasts? Fix them.
‘Today, I think we are lucky to be able to have cosmetic surgery. It isn’t cheap — I spent well over £5,000 — but it has made the world of difference to me.
‘My ex-husband thought he’d destroyed me as a woman, but he hasn’t. If he saw me now, he wouldn’t recognise me.
‘I am bursting with confidence and feel the sexiest and healthiest I have ever been.
‘I am dating again, have bought a new wardrobe of clothes and feel as if I have my life back.
‘I suppose, in a way, I have created a new person from the shadow of the woman I had become.’
Many of the divorced women opting for vengeance surgery are hoping to buy back the body they had before childbirth.
This is certainly the case for Miri Jackson, who discovered not long after giving birth to their daughter that her husband was having an affair with a woman ten years younger.
‘Having just had a baby, my sense of self-worth was very low. I was a dress size 16, my boobs were sagging and I did not feel at my most attractive,’ says the 33-year-old, the manager of a freight company, who lives in Burbage, Leicestershire.
‘I thought long and hard about what I could do to get even,’ she says.
‘I knew I didn’t want him back — but I wanted to feel as if I was worth something again. I wanted to feel good about myself.
‘I wanted to wear beautiful clothes, look in the mirror and feel like an attractive woman.
‘I certainly did not want him to feel that I was sitting at home pining for him.
‘So I decided to have cosmetic surgery. I decided to have my breasts enlarged, as they were the thing I hated most about my figure.
‘Now I don’t feel old, or neglected, or cast off — I am my own woman again.
‘I see my ex-husband quite often, obviously, because of our daughter. He is still with the woman he had an affair with, but when I drop off our daughter, I often seeing something in his eyes which looks suspiciously like regret.
‘Revenge is definitely the best medicine after you have been so very badly hurt.’
To view Dr Ayoubi in the media click here.
