By Breaking Celebrity News Staff

Glee star Amber Riley has tearfully admitted how years of rejection by Hollywood execs affected her body image.

The 26-year-old makes her comments in an interview for the MTV series This Is How I Made It, which airs on Saturdays.

Riley, who plays Mercedes Jones in Glee, says: "Hollywood is a very hard place to be in. It really is.

"Being the person that I am, being the size that I am, being a woman, being a black woman, there's not a lot of roles for us."

Riley then goes on to explain how – shortly after filming the TV movie St. Sass 10 years ago – she struggled to get hired because of her size.

The actress says: "After I did St. Sass I kept on auditioning. I was being offered roles like 'the girl who sits in the corner and eats all day,' 'the girl who wanted to commit suicide because she was fat.' It was never anything that I felt had a good ending.

"I never wanted to play a character that hated herself. I wanted people to know that those aren't the only kind of roles for women like me – normal girls."

The constant rejection weighed heavily on the teenager who took a brief career break and focused on finishing high school.

She tells MTV: "Going to auditions and having the casting director say: 'I think you need to lose a little weight,' I didn't understand why people