Lea Michele covers Allure‘s December 2020 issue and looks sexy and glam with a cat-eye makeup. Inside the magazine, the 25-year-old actress talks about Glee rumors, what it was like to strip down on stage, breaking up with boyfriend Theo Stockman, working with Gwyneth Paltrow, why she’s proud to be a diva, and her unconventional beauty. “Have I been asked to change anything? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. 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,” Lea said about her unique appearance.
Michele and her boyfriend, Theo Stockman, have called it quits this September after a relationship of one year. “It’s important to me to be honest about these things, there are horrific breakups, but we were friends before, and we’ll be friends after,” Lea confesses.
Speaking about all the stories regarding her diva behavior, the young actress says that, “I came from the theater world, where the word ‘diva’ was awesome. But it’s different in Los Angeles. And this all happened to me so quickly. But I came to L.A., and the first audition I went on was for Glee. And I was on the show two months later and had a very different life.”
In the interview with Allure, Lea Michele discusses the last year’s scandal caused by the photos in which she and Dianna Agron were dressed in sexy schoolgirl outfits and posed provocatively with their Glee costar Cory Monteith. “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. But there was such controversy. I do try to keep in mind that there are a lot of young viewers watching our show. But it’s a delicate balance, continuing to be who you are but also remembering you’re in a certain position. But would I do the shoot again? Absolutely,” Michele says.
Lea also dishes on her role in Broadway’s Spring Awakening that required her to strip down on stage. Back then, she was only 20. “Every night he dropped his pants and I took off my top. So depending on where you were seated—on one side of us or the other—people who were going to see the show would be like, ‘What side were you sitting on? The butt or the boobs,’” she recalls.
On Gwyneth Paltrow with whom Lea had the chance to work for Glee, the actress told Allure that, “I don’t know what people are smoking, because this woman is one of the most talented, beautiful, smart but laid-back, cool people I’ve worked with. That’s what I hate about this business. Before I met her, I was intimidated because of her image. But she’s the greatest.”
For more of Lea Michele’s interview, pick up the December issue of Allure, on newsstands November 22.
Photos courtesy of Allure
