When I was young, I was teased mercilessly by my classmates for being a redhead. I wasn't particularly well coordinated either, which made me a bit of a liability in P.E.

When you're younger, being a redhead is... Well, my two brothers teased me no end.

When I was 12, I first made the decision to go vegetarian after a co-star's line 'I don't eat anything with a face' suddenly shocked me into reality.

The more I read and watched about the meat industry, the more determined I became to keep meat out of my diet. The things I saw in slaughterhouse exposes made me feel sick and I refused to just ignore what I now knew.

I want to speak up and tell you that mascara and clothes don't make you cool, neither do name-brand handbags, but being a leader can.

For many years, I struggled with how I felt about myself. I hid and harbored very self-destructive eating issues, namely anorexia, which at its worst caused me to lose half of my hair and brought my weight down dramatically.