Queen Latifah Covers Good Housekeeping Mag, Talks About Her Weight, Drinking & More [PICZ]

In the January issue of Good Housekeeping, Dana Elaine Owens, popularly known as Queen Latifah, recalls using alcohol in the past to ease her pain after tragedy. She now says she focuses on "accentuating the positive" in her life.

Though the 43-year-old actress appears joyful on the cover; wearing a bright red dress and a big smile, Latifah opens up to the magazine about some of her darkest moments. In 1995, the talk show host was the victim of a violent carjacking in which her passenger friend was shot and nearly died. Latifah said she didn't cope with the shock of the incident well. "Drinking a bunch of alcohol, numbing myself," she recalled. "Every day I would be faded, like a painting that's just not vibrant, whose edges are dull. I wasn't living my full life."

The actress also spoke about being a bigger woman amongst the tiny starlets of Hollywood. “…for a lot of the things I’ve wanted to do in life, I haven’t looked typical,” she said “I was not born a size 2. I’m not skinny, period.” Still, she learned early on to embrace her beauty and differences. “When I was around 18, I looked in the mirror and said, ‘You’re either going to love yourself or hate yourself.’ And I decided to love myself. That changed a lot of things,” she recalled.

Sadly, body image hasn’t been the only hurdle Latifah has had to clear. Just as her career took off, her brother was killed in a motorcycle accident. A devout Baptist, Latifah had a hard time accepting the loss. “My life was rocked to the core. And I felt guilty, because I was angry at God,” she explained.