Patricia Arquette "didn't want to be limited" by her beauty during her acting career

She told New York Post column PageSix: "I really was conscious about trying to get out of that ingenue situation as quickly as possible.

"Beauty felt really dangerous to me and a bit scary. It also felt one-note, and felt like [it had] a short shelf life."

Arquette went on to explain she took a role in 2001 movie Human Nature playing a character with hypertrichosis - a condition that causes excessive hair growth - because she didn't want to be typecast in traditional leading lady roles.

She added: "I didn't want to be limited by my own beauty. I didn't even feel beautiful myself, but the world was treating me like that, so I always had a really intense conflict with that."

Patricia previously admitted she had to deal with "creepy" behaviour when she was younger but tried not to "take it personally".

She told The Guardian newspaper: "Honestly, the grossest things that have happened to me did not happen in this business. I grew up at a time when the whole world was pretty blatantly creepy.

"[I had to cope with] racy jokes and people commenting on your body, or even brushing past you or touching you in a certain way. I would have gone crazy if I took it all personally. I feel like my whole life was a bit of a booby trap of all of that stuff."

The Boyhood star insisted that she is doing fine these days, even though she reflected that her awareness of her own "beauty" in those days was a risky thing for her.

She said: "My younger life. Now, no. When you're old, you're OK. [I considered myself beautiful] and how dangerous it was that others were aware]. My beauty in the world was dangerous for me, and scary.

"Looking certain ways really impacts how my characters are treated in their lives, and how they perceive the world ... This is part of how I tell the story of different human beings."