Christina Hendricks used to say there was nothing she could do about her "bones" when modelling agencies asked her to lose weight.

The Mad Men star had a difficult childhood as she was bullied at school for being different.

Things began to change when she was 19 and moved to New York City. She worked as a model as she wasn't as voluptuous then as she is now.

She worked all over the world and although she was a slender US size 4, Christina was still told to slim down.

"When I was working in Italy I was having cappuccinos every day. I'd take my clothes off in front of the mirror and be like, Oh, I look like a woman,'" she recalled.

"I felt beautiful and I never tried to lose it 'cos I loved it. I was 20lbs. lighter than I am now, but modelling agencies used to tell me to lose 10, 15, 20lbs. I'd be like That's bone - I can't. That's not going anywhere!'"

Christina puts her youthful slim figure down to her love of ballet when she was growing up.

She is now famed for having a womanly bust and hips. She hopes that women who are struggling to accept their figure will look at her and realise that curves are sexy.

It took the 36-year-old a long time to feel she was attractive. The schoolyard bullying took its toll and it wasn't until she took some special photographs for a magazine competition that things began to change.

At school she had multi-coloured hair in a bid to be different, so she donned a wig for the shots. The resulting images made her re-evaluate herself.

"When I got the pictures back my mom and I started crying because I had no idea I could be pretty," she recalled to British newspaper The Mirror.

"I'd always felt awkward. It was the first time I really felt pretty. It just sort of changed my perspective of myself."