Lea Michele: My Managers Told Me 'You're Not Pretty Enough!'

On Glee, Lea Michele plays Rachel, an overzealous, career-driven Broadway lover with pipes that rival those of Barbra Streisand. In real life, Michele, 25, is a bit older than the high school senior, but she's not all that different. "People have to tell me to slow down," she told Harper's Bazaar. "I plan on playing every role on Broadway. I want to do Evita. I want to do Sweeney Todd with [Glee costar] Chris Colfer. We want to do Wicked. I’ll be Elphaba and he wants to play ‘Guy-linda.’ I want to do movies, make music. Glee is only the beginning."

The actress, who appears in the upcoming film, Glee Live! 3D!, said her looks have gotten in her way a few times along the path to stardom. "I'm five foot three. I don't look like a lot of other people, you know what I mean? I look like I'm 12," she said. But it's not just her diminutive stature that has put some bumps in the road. "How many managers told me, 'Get a nose job. You're not pretty enough'? But I proved them wrong," she said defiantly.

Like her character Rachel, Michele relies on a strong sense of self to keep naysayers at bay, but she also takes words of wisdom from women she admires. "I am obsessed with Gwyneth Paltrow," she said of the actress who makes regular guest appearances on the show. "I love talking with Gwyneth. She just gives good advice. She said, 'Don’t ever read anything about you.'"

With so many Glee commitments on both the small and sliver screen, it's incredible Michele has time for anything else. She is dating fellow thespian Theo Stockman, and she will appear in the upcoming New Year's Eve opposite a half-naked Ashton Kutcher who at one point wears nothing but a towel. "I might have blacked out," Michele says, if Kutcher's towel had hit the floor.

Addressing rumors that, again like Rachel, she can be a diva on set, Michele made no admissions but focused on the fact that she and the other cast members are still growing up. "People have to remember this is all new for us. We’re all reasonably young, except for Cory [Monteith], who’s old," she said, adding: "I've learned some lessons. But people are going to say what they want to say. I know who I am, and I'm not perfect."