No, this wasn’t an April Fool’s joke. Kristen Bell really was told she wasn’t “pretty enough” early on in her career.

Seriously, America’s sweetheart! WTF!

Video: Kristen & Dax Shepard Are Having PROBLEMS During The Quarantine

During one of those YouTube videos where she breaks down her career highlights, this one for Vanity Fair, KBell got candid about the hurdles she had to face early on in her journey to stardom.

She recalls to the outlet:

“I remember early on, getting feedback, that I wasn’t enough in either category. I would get feedback from an audition: ‘Well, you’re not pretty enough to play the pretty girl, but you’re not quirky enough or weird enough to play the weird girl.'”

Seriously?? Not pretty enough to play the pretty girl? What were they looking for??

Well, this was the late ’90s/early 2000s we’re talking about, when everything from the WB Network shows to horror movies was casting absolute dreamboat Abercrombie models for every single role. The demons on Charmed looked like they stepped off the set of a soap opera, slashers took off their masks to reveal they were Timothy Olyphant or David Boreanaz, even Lex Luthor was a hottie! So it was a time of ridiculous standards. But KRISTEN BELL??

It was as daunting to hear as you might expect. She remembers:

“I was like, ‘Okay, does that just mean I can’t be an actor? What does that mean. That’s what I was getting feedback on, on every audition.”

Thankfully she was perfect for the role of the titular outcast cutie high school detective in the beloved Veronica Mars.

And from there she killed it in multiple iconic roles — and has been at the fore as the landscape of Hollywood leading ladies has transformed into something that looks a lot more like the diversity of characters you meet in real life. She explains:

“I think as I’ve grown older, those boxes have changed… and they’ve almost gone away. It’s this huge gray area now of all these beautiful stories you can tell that have dimensional people that don’t have to be one thing. It’s not the ’80s where you have to have the popular girl and then the nerd who gets the guy. It’s not that anymore, and I’m really grateful for that. And I think it opens up a lot of opportunities for everyone to play and pretend, which is the most fun part.”

See Kristen break down her roles in Veronica Mars, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Gossip Girl, Frozen, and more (below)!

[Image via Hulu/YouTube/WENN/Avalon.]

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