Lena Headey Quotes

You get stared at the whole time. I first noticed that when I was about 13. I was very shy. Being considered beautiful, I always felt that people were waiting for something more. I imagined you were supposed to have an intellectual ability - and I'm making no claims here - proportional to your supposed good looks.

I don't want to have to be beautiful all the time. I want to be able to look cruddy in my weekend sweats, with a pimple on my face and pimple cream on top of the pimple. The expectation to always be beautiful bothers me.

I think it must be so hard to start your career with everyone going on about how gorgeous you are. To be in that bracket must be so pressurised.

I wasn't raised in a family that cared about how you look. The fact that I have made my living in acting, where that matters, that really feels antithetical to me as a person.

I think models in general have a certain insecurity about themselves because they're known for being beautiful, so they have to prove to everybody they have personality and they are intelligent.

People still take it really personally. They come up to me at breakfast places like, 'When are you growing your hair back?'

I see women in their 30s getting plastic surgery, pulling this up and tucking that back. It's like a slippery slope - once you start you pull one thing one way and then you think, 'Oh my God, I've got to do the other side.'

I always hated the part when I had to look pretty. I love that I don't have to look pretty.

In those days I was mortified, because I was a serious actor in my own mind, and then all of a sudden I'm this hunk.

I can't imagine being on one of those shows where people have to look nice.

I just think that I'll never have plastic surgery if I'm not in front of the camera. If you make your living selling this thing, which is the way you look, then maybe you do it. But trust me, the minute I'm directing or producing and not starring, I would never even think of it.

The good thing about not being drop-dead gorgeous is that as time passes, I don't have much to worry about. I have friends who are actors and every day they look in the mirror with trepidation.

I'm not a public figure; I shouldn't have to be held to a certain standard of beauty.

I feel fortunate that I'm not a beauty. I'm not a classic beauty. I feel it is harder for girls who are like that. There are fewer parts.

Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.

I was naturally skinny and had braces, so I wasn't a cute model.

It puts you in a kind of a strange situation where everybody is looking at every little thing you do.

You see those magazines, 'Oh, look at so-and-so without makeup, Halle Berry without makeup.' It's so crazy to wake up in the morning and have that thought - 'Do I need to put makeup on? Do I need to do something because I know people are going to know who I am?'

I've been many people. I've been the skinny girl. I've been the fat girl. Because I've become a character actress, I sort of fell victim to 'Well, I don't have to look good anymore.'

It's fine being stared at as a pretty girl, but not as a freak. When I tried to make myself ugly, they said, 'Oh, she's lost her looks.'

The pressure to look good is intense. It is hard to be immune to that and the self-consciousness that comes with it.

We're just so self-conscious. However much we try not to be, on some level, especially as a woman and an actress, you have so much pressure when it comes your hair and the bags under your eyes and your skin.

Everybody laughs at me because I don't really wear much make-up. I have to be forced and usually people buy make-up for me because they're like, this is ridiculous.

I hate the pressure of having to look good all the time.

It really bugs me when people say I've had a nose job.