Lea Michele: ‘I’m very content with me’

CEBU, Philippines – Lea Michele has opened up in the past about the importance of health and wellness in her life, attending Pilates classes and focusing on whole foods wherever she goes. All the hard work has left her with an enviable body, one she says she accomplished without the work of a trainer.

The “Glee” alum reveals in Marie Claire magazine’s November issue what her favorite body part is. “I love my butt,” she admits. “It’s a showstopper.”

The past two years have certainly had their ups and downs, having lost boyfriend Cory Monteith and moving on from her hit musical show. But the 29-year-old star has come along way, finding love with Matthew Paetz and a newfound awareness after struggling with fame for a little while. Fortunately, she figured out how to move forward in her life.

“Getting to the other side takes a lot of work. All you can do is get to the other side,” she says of having to move forward after Monteith’s passing. “It’s a struggle. When you do, there is happiness there. It’s important to me to keep private some of that process with how I got here. But I am here, I am good, and I am very grateful for that.”

Her connections with people are very important, she explains, because of the tough criticism she faces in her day job. “Everybody thinks you’re a star with roses being dropped at your feet. You have to take some punches,” the “Scream Queens” star says.

“Now I have my groove. I am much more aware. I also don’t care as much. I am very content with me.”

Also opening up about how “Glee” changed her as a person, Michele says: “All of our lives changed on Glee. I went from working on Broadway and living in New York to completely uprooting my life, moving to Los Angeles, being on a television show, having people know who I am. My life changed pretty drastically. We grew up a lot over those years and it was really an amazing experience, and nothing will ever be like ‘Glee,’ but everything else will be uniquely on its own just as good.”

Other things will be great, yes, but calling a wrap on “Glee” was still extremely difficult. “I definitely prepared myself as much as possible, leading up to the last day and each day coming into work and being like ‘Oh my gosh, this is my last scene with this person!’” she says. “I did a lot of the work leading up, but no matter what, on that last day it’s just kind of like ‘Oh my God, we are never gonna be here ever again.’”

In the meantime, though, Michele seems pretty happy to be working on “Scream Queens.” But while she calls Ryan Murphy “an amazing person and an incredible boss to have,” there’s one thing she won’t do for him: Scream!

“I refuse to scream on the show,” she says. “Ryan got me in a booth one day and I told him ‘I’m screaming like twice and then you’re going to have to use it the whole season’ because I’m a singer and I was there with Ariana Grande and we were like ‘We can’t scream, this is our gift.’  So I don’t scream, they just dub it in.”

“But,” she adds, “they say I do a really good scream face without having to scream.”