Mariah Carey has had a complex about her face since she was 19.

The 40-year-old singer admits she has always been self-conscious about her appearance after somebody at her record company pointed it out.

She said: 'I remember starting out and being at a record company at 19 and having someone tell me, 'This is your good side and this is your bad side. Don't ever let anyone take pictures of you from that side. You look terrible from that side,' and so on. It created this whole complex – like I didn't already have a complex!'

Mariah - whose mother is Irish-American and her father was an African-American of Venezuelan descent – says she has always been insecure about her looks because she's mixed-race.

She said: 'I felt very different as a bi-racial person. Growing up where I did, being half-black and half-white was a weird and difficult thing because I didn't quite fit in either place and I moved around a lot. So when I went from that to this world it was like, let's create an inferiority complex before we make this person go on TV and try to have confidence. So it was all about building self-confidence.'