Jennifer Love Hewitt was as "sexy as a peanut" when she was younger.
The 33-year-old actress may play a saucy masseuse who offers extra services in US drama ‘The Client List’, but she admits she wasn’t confident about her body and looks when she was 18
She said: "Sex? I was about as sexy as a peanut. I had the sultriness of a clam."
However, it was her role in 2001 movie ‘Heartbreakers’ – in which she starred with Sigourney Weaver as they played a mother and daughter con team who seduced rich men – which unlocked her libido.
After the director David Mirkin told her the sort of sultry behavior he expected on screen, Jennifer quizzed her guy friends on what they found a turn-on in a woman.
In an interview with The Sun newspaper, she revealed: "David told me what he wanted from me and I thought, ‘My God, if I do that, I’m going to scare small children.’
"He told me to go home and look in the mirror and have a conversation with myself to make myself feel sexy … What I also did was interview a group of my guy friends and ask them to tell me what makes a woman sexy, because I had no idea. I loved playing the bad girl. Wearing outrageous clothes was very liberating. I was usually a jeans and T-shirt girl.
Jennifer is still wary about being overtly sexual and although she’s happy to be sexy on screen she won’t strip naked on screen.
The ‘Ghost Whisperer’ star said: "I’ve always turned down parts with nudity. I didn’t like to look at myself naked, so I did not want the world to look at me naked either. I don’t mind the rest. I do not mind having my boobs accentuated. I would much rather have attention on my boobs than my big butt!"