Eva Longoria claims she was an ugly child.

The 'Desperate Housewives' star - who is widely regarded to be one of Hollywood's most beautiful celebrities - says she was a plain little girl who paled in comparison to her pretty, blonde sisters. The olive-skinned beauty says her father even gave her the nickname 'la prieta faya', meaning 'the ugly dark one', when she was young. She added: "I was skinny and short. I didn't blossom until college." Eva, 30, says she worked so hard on developing a good personality to compensate for not being good-looking, she didn't realise when men started noticing her. She revealed to Glamour magazine: "I did notice heads turning, but as I depended so much on my personality, I thought it was because I was such a great person."