'Precious' Star Gabourey Sidibe: My First Diet Started At Age Six (VIDEO)

'Precious' star Gabourey Sidibe visited Oprah Friday to promote her movie, in which she plays an obese teenager who is twice impregnated by her father. Gabby's own Harlem adolescence was not nearly as troubled but she did struggle for years with her body image.

Oprah pointed out that director Lee Daniels has said Gabby speaks "like a white girl from the Valley" and is so confident that she is "either in denial about her physicality or from another planet."

"It's something I've had to work at. My first diet started when I was six years old," Gabby said. "I've never been a small girl. One day I had to sit down with myself and decide that I loved myself no matter what my body looked like and what other people thought about my body."

She said that she was 21 or 22 when she finally became comfortable in her own skin. "I got tired of feeling bad all the time. I got tired of hating myself."

'Precious' opens nationwide Friday.

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