Lady Gaga opens up about feeling 'ugly' in emotional interview

Lady Gaga is a performer who is as well known for her bold sartorial choices and makeup looks as she is for her musical endeavours - but she's currently left the aforementioned on the back-burner. The songstress cum actress has been working on the upcoming musical, A Star is Born, alongside Bradley Cooper - and it's her most raw and unfiltered performance to date.

Bradley Cooper portrays an ageing music legend whose career is steadily declining when he meets an up-and-comer, Ally - who is played by Stefani Germanotta (a.k.a Lady Gaga). It's a remake of a Hollywood classic that has previously starred the likes of Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, and now it's Lady Gaga's time to shine - but in a way that we've never seen her before.

Wearing little to no makeup and an unkempt brunette hairstyle, the pop-star has never seemed so vulnerable. In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Lady Gaga opens up about how portraying Ally made her deal with her own personal insecurities, and it got super emotional.

Speaking to the publication, Gaga recalled that when she did a screen test for the role back in 2016, Bradley Cooper - her director and co-star - approached her with a makeup wipe and requested that she remove her foundation, blush and eye makeup to ensure that the test was "completely open".

The 32-year-old, who is known for her eclectic makeup looks, admitted that removing all of her cosmetics initially made her feel vulnerable. However, she decided to "completely let go and trust" Cooper.

"It put me right in the place I needed to be, because when my character talks about how ugly she feels—that was real," Gaga told interviewer, Amy Kaufman. "I'm so insecure. I like to preach, but I don't always practice what I preach."

She went onto assert that similar to her character Ally, when she first entered the music industry, she was frequently told that she didn't have the right "look". However, she's ultimately realised that it's her fans - and her interactions with them - that make her feel "beautiful".

"To be honest, I think what makes me feel beautiful is when I see happiness in my fans. When I see or hear from them that the music that I've made has changed their life in some way, that's what makes me feel beautiful. Because this is just the outside, you know? And at the end of the day, I could be in a million movies and put out a million songs and everyone could say, 'She was so beautiful,' but that's not really what I want. I want them to say, 'I saw that movie and I cried my eyes out and I learned something about myself.'"

While it's surprising to hear that someone like Lady Gaga has insecurities and occasionally suffers from low self-esteem, at the same time, it's heartening to realise that even the most recognisable of celebrities have off days sometimes.