Actress Emma Stone has learned to embrace her pale complexion after growing up in a sunny climate and wishing for a tan.

The fair star of The Help spent her childhood in Arizona hiding in the shade to avoid burning her skin, but she longed to be tanned like her friends.

She says, "You tend to look like a thumb, you know, you're just all one shade when you're this pale. There was a time where I could not stand the pale. I'm from Arizona, and everyone is very, very tan. It's super sunny. I couldn't go in the sun because I don't have any pigment in my skin - which I now really appreciate. But sometimes I still want to be warmed up because it's built into my DNA to think tan is incredible."

And Emma Stone admits she committed plenty of beauty faux pas trying to master fake tanning products.

She recalls, "But I got a lot of spray tans, and before I discovered spray tans I got a lot of those tanning lotions and that is not a good look. I did not know how to apply it in a way that didn't look like I had just rolled around in a bunch of dirt. So it was like a splotchy, streaky mess of a situation. I'm sure some people are able to do it in the right way, but that was always my biggest beauty mishap... the solid two years I spent spray tanning."