With her hour-glass figure and flame-red hair, it’s no wonder Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks was voted the sexiest woman in the world.

Vivienne Westwood calls her the “embodiment of beauty” while LA critics say she’s “the new ideal of Hollywood glamour”.

Even Equalities minister Lynne Featherstone has gushed that the “fabulous” star is a role model for figure-conscious females.

Christina drew gasps of amazement yet again this week, sashaying down the red carpet at the Baftas and Elle Style Awards in gowns that showed off her curves.

But while soaking up all the adoration, she allowed herself a smile of satisfaction – remembering the bullies who made her schooldays hell.

Christina, who shot to fame as Mad Men’s feisty office manager Joan Holloway, was viciously targeted by cruel classmates for being a teenage misfit.

And the beauty now hailed as an icon of femininity grew up feeling “ugly, awkward and horrible”.

(Image: Splash News)

Christina, 36, explains: “My school days were pretty unhappy. I had the worst high school experience ever. I went to a very mean school and was bullied like crazy.

“I was a bit of a goth with purple hair and I was also part of the drama group, so my friends and I were all weird theatre people and everyone just hated us.

“There was a long corridor with lockers on either side and kids would sit on top of them and spit on you. It was like something out of Lord of the Flies.”

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Christina was still young when she moved to a small town in Idaho with her parents, Robert and Jackie Sue, and her elder brother.

A natural blonde, she began dying her hair red aged 10 – to be like the heroine of children’s book Anne of Green Gables. Then in her early teens, the family moved to Fairfax, Virginia.

Christina says: “The girls there had purses and I still had my backpack from Idaho.

“Moving as a teenager is never easy. So I tried to set myself apart and it ended up with multi-coloured hair. It was how I was expressing myself.

(Image: Getty)

“I was a goth kid. I dyed my hair about 42 different colours, shaved it at the back and wore black make-up. Kids can be pretty judgmental about people who are different.

"But instead of breaking down and conforming, I stood firm. That is also probably why I was unhappy.

“My mother was mortified and kept telling me how horrible and ugly I looked. Strangers would walk by with a look of shock on their face, so I never felt pretty. I just always felt awkward.

“If I could go back and tell my 14-year-old self anything it would be, ‘Don’t worry. You’re going to be doing exactly what you want to be doing and those people who are a***holes now are still going to be a***holes in 20 years. So let it go!’”

After leaving school Christina was persuaded to enter a contest to appear on the cover of Seventeen magazine.

Wearing a wig she posed for pictures in a cemetery. And even though she didn’t win the competition, those photographs proved a revelation.

“When I got the pictures back my mum and I started crying because I had no idea I could be pretty,” she recalls.

“I’d always felt awkward. It was the first time I really felt pretty. It just sort of changed my perspective of myself.”

(Image: Getty)

At the age of 19, she moved to New York and began modelling professionally.

She says: “‘I loved it. I think it helped that I started a bit older, but I really took advantage of the travel and learning about different cultures.”

At 5ft 8in tall and weighing 11st, Christina is a UK size 14 and those famous curves reportedly measure 38DD-32-38.

But when she started modelling she was just over eight stones.

She says: “I’d done ballet for years and was tiny then, a size 4 [UK size 8], so I didn’t have any problems about conforming to a certain body type. As you get older your body changes. I’ve tried to embrace how I look at every stage.”

But Christina was put under pressure to slim as she became more curvy.

She says: “When I was working in Italy I was having cappuccinos every day. I’d take my clothes off in front of the mirror and be like, ‘Oh, I look like a woman.’

"I felt beautiful and I never tried to lose it ’cos I loved it. I was 20lb lighter than I am now, but modelling agencies used to tell me to lose 10, 15, 20lb.

“I’d be like ‘That’s bone – I can’t. That’s not going anywhere!’”

(Image: BBC)

In the mid-1990s, Christina spent a year living in London. She says with a smile: “I lived near Holloway Prison, off the Holloway Road. Maybe that was a sign.”

She had roles in ER, Fire Fly and Cold Case before being cast as Joan Holloway in Mad Men in 2007.

Christina credits the 1960s fashions in the award-winning series for making Joan such an icon – all those pencil skirts, nipped-in waists and conical bras.

As the show went global she was amazed at the reaction to her figure. This year experts claimed a rise in demand for boob jobs in the UK was because women want to look like Christina.

She says: “I hope I’m not encouraging that. If there’s anything to be learned from me it’s that I’m learning to celebrate what I was born with, even though it’s sometimes been inconvenient.

“Having larger breasts has made it harder to shop, but I’ve learned to love it... But now I feel like everyone talks about my bust in public.”

Sadly, not all the attention has been kind. When she wore a ruffled gown to the Golden Globes, the New York Times wrote: “You don’t put a big girl in a big dress.” The paper even distorted a photo to make her look wider.

(Image: Lionsgate)

Christina sighs: “It was rude. It was goofy and it hurt my feelings.”

Soon after starting on Mad Men she met actor Geoffrey Arend, 34, star of TV series Body of Proof.

They wed in October 2009 and this week he flew from LA to London where Christina is filming for a month, just to be with her on Valentine’s Day

But it wasn’t love at first sight.

Christina, who recently appeared in Drive, I Don’t Know How She Does It and is tipped to play Wonder Woman in a remake of the 70s series, explains: “We were both coming out of other relationships and weren’t in that mindset.

“Then my friends invited him to dinner and he was late. They asked if I wanted to save the seat next to me for Geoffrey and I went: ‘No, no, it’s not like that.’

“Of course, as soon as I said it didn’t matter, it suddenly did matter. I think my brain had to catch up with my heart.”

So how does she feel about being called the sexiest woman in the world?

“It’s very nice,” she says flashing that 100 watt smile. “But my husband always says, ‘I told you that years ago!’ And he’s the one who makes me feel sexy.”