I can't believe it's been four years now, and from watching that pilot, we really all looked like babies. It's unbelievable just how far everything has come. I'm happier now than I've ever been on the show and in my life. I really owe so much of my happiness to 'Glee.'

I am an unconventional beauty. I grew up in a high school where if you didn't have a nose job and money and if you weren't thin, you weren't cool, popular, beautiful. I was always told that I wasn't pretty enough to be on television.

I don't see anyone as being different than anyone else, whether you're gay or straight or whatever - everyone's the same. That's how I was raised.

I'm Italian and Spanish and Jewish. I'm 100 different things meshed into one. I think that shows girls that uniqueness is beautiful. They can look at me on a magazine cover and see me in a movie and say that they have someone they can relate to.

Nobody should be entirely defined by one thing

I was one of the only girls in my high school that didn't get [a nose job]. And if anybody needed it, I probably did... I'm proud to be on a positive show and to be a voice for girls and say, 'You don't need to look like everybody else. Love who you are.'

I'm honored to be in a position to have young girls or performers look up to me.