Lea Michele of Glee Dismisses Eating Disorder Rumors

Although she’s 25 years old, actress Lea Michele convincingly plays a character nearly a decade younger due to her youthful, fresh-faced appearance and bubbly performance as Rachel Berry on Glee.

But late in the summer of 2010, rumors began piling up that the Glee star appeared gaunt and markedly thinner on the red carpet at the Nickelodeon Teen Choice Awards, causing buzz on gossip sites that Michele could possibly have an eating disorder. Michele addresses the scuttlebutt in her latest interview with Allure magazine, saying that a jaw operation and eating a vegan diet are what led to her weight loss, not any issues with food.

The actress jokes about her eating prowess despite her veganism:

“People get confused, like, you know, I just eat grass… I’m half Italian. I can eat some bitches under the table.”

Body image issues are brought up elsewhere in the interview- Michele also talks about her distinctive nose and pressures to surgically alter it- she says:

“When I was 15, my mother and I went to meet a manager who said, ‘You have to get a nose job in order for me to work with you… My mother would say to me, ‘Barbra Streisand never got a nose job. You’re not getting a nose job.’ And this was before I really even knew who Barbra was. I just knew that she was, like, the messiah for girls like me.”

Michele also defended the controversial Rolling Stone photoshoot that caused the Glee cast to come in for some criticism. The actress points out that the cast is a decade or more older than the characters they play:

“People were really offended by this, being that we play high-school students. But we’re not high-school students! Cory is almost 30, and Dianna and I are 25.”

Michele says she would “absolutely” do the shoot again, if she had to do it over.