Feb. 8, 2007

It's nice to know Hollywood doesn't discriminate when it comes to damaging a starlet's fragile self-esteem. Turns out the rickety and robust alike are made to feel lousy for failing to achieve an impossibly high standard of beauty.

First up is Keira Knightley, 21, who reveals to Hello magazine that her prepossessing visage has been both a gift and a curse.

"I do think I must have a nice face because I'm completely aware my face gets me work," acknowledges the actress, who last month sued a British newspaper for implying her Ginsu-sharp clavicles and fat-free abs might be the result of an eating disorder. "But the problem is that if you happen to be someone who people think of as pretty, you also get so many people whose business it is to comment on your looks."

Sometimes unkindly.

"I've been to photo shoots," she recalls, "where the photographer has told me he'd kept my legs out of shot so I don't need to worry about them -- that of course makes you worry."

Not even her comely countenance escapes judgment.

"Then I've had makeup artists who've told me they need to shade the top of my nose so it won't look so broken," says Knightley. "I also got rejected for a job once because someone said I had a funny mouth."

As a result, she sighs, these supposed flaws become the "things you start to focus on. You start off thinking you're OK, then you have to go to some event and you remember you have a weird mouth, a broken nose and horrible legs."

On the plus side, Keira can shimmy her curve-free frame into the tightest couture, something the enviably shapely Mandy Moore can't always do.

"I want to be healthy, but in an industry where you can't wear a sample size because it's like a 0 or a 2, it makes you feel bad about yourself," the apple-cheeked actress-cum-singer admits to Seventeen. "To go to a photo shoot, it's like, 'Ugh, God, can't you just at least get a regular size, like a 6 or 8 or something?'"

The statuesque Moore, 22, knows she can forget about becoming a card-carrying member of the bobblehead brigade and is fine with it.

"I'm not Nicole Richie. I'm not like a toothpick, and I never will be," she says, name-checking the angular but ever-so-slightly healthier-looking ex of her new boyfriend, Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein. "I'm just a regular-looking person -- and that's OK. It's taken a while to come to grips with that since it's definitely not the norm in my business. But like, who cares?"

Posits Mandy, "If anything, that makes someone more special," before laughingly adding, "or at least that's what I tell myself!"

Perhaps Keira and Mandy will follow the example of the sublime Kate Winslet, who has both been there and carb-avoided that and is now perfectly content with her size.

"When it comes to dieting, I just don't care," the mother-of-two admits to Good Housekeeping. "I watch myself as much as any average woman does, you know? I'll eat one cookie, not a whole box of cookies. But I'll still eat the one cookie ... sometimes two or even three. But not the whole box."

The thespian, 31, whose fabulous figure Keira once admired for its "decadent flesh," says she's now a size 6 or 8, and "for me, that's normal. I don't need to be less than that ... I've stayed at the same weight for a while now. I just don't worry about my weight anymore. I notice it ... but I don't avoid anything, and I'm not a fanatic."

Declares Kate, "I think that's a miserable, terrible way to live your life."