Jennifer Love Hewitt - Jennifer Love Hewitt: I was as sexy as a peanut

Jennifer Love Hewitt: I was as sexy as a peanut

Jennifer Love Hewitt was as ''sexy as a peanut'' when she was younger.

The 33-year-old actress may play a saucy masseuse who offers extra services in US drama 'The Client List', but she admits she wasn't confident about her body and looks when she was 18

She said: ''Sex? I was about as sexy as a peanut. I had the sultriness of a clam.''

However, it was her role in 2001 movie 'Heartbreakers' - in which she starred with Sigourney Weaver as they played a mother and daughter con team who seduced rich men - which unlocked her libido.

After the director David Mirkin told her the sort of sultry behaviour he expected on screen, Jennifer quizzed her guy friends on what they found a turn-on in a woman.

In an interview with The Sun newspaper, she revealed: ''David told me what he wanted from me and I thought, 'My God, if I do that, I'm going to scare small children.'

''He told me to go home and look in the mirror and have a conversation with myself to make myself feel sexy ... What I also did was interview a group of my guy friends and ask them to tell me what makes a woman sexy, because I had no idea. I loved playing the bad girl. Wearing outrageous clothes was very liberating. I was usually a jeans and T-shirt girl.

Jennifer is still wary about being overtly sexual and although she's happy to be sexy on screen she won't strip naked on screen.

The 'Ghost Whisperer' star said: ''I've always turned down parts with nudity. I didn't like to look at myself naked, so I did not want the world to look at me naked either. I don't mind the rest. I do not mind having my boobs accentuated. I would much rather have attention on my boobs than my big butt!''