Women's Health

Jennifer Love Hewitt Dishes Dating Advice in 'The Day I Shot Cupid'

With a name like Love, how could you not be a hopeless romantic? As a child, Jennifer Love Hewitt -- born a week after Valentine's Day -- says she refused to believe that the day wasn't created just for her. But as an adult who's been both lucky and unlucky in love, most of it on the front page of the tabloids, the star and co-producer of the CBS series Ghost Whisperer says she's traded in her rose-colored glasses for a more clear-eyed look at modern romance. It's a view she shares in her new book, The Day I Shot Cupid: Hello, My Name Is Jennifer Love Hewitt and I'm a Love-aholic. Hewitt says she envisioned the book as a "mate and a friend in the dating process, the good angel on your shoulder."

Cupid covers everything from being comfortable going out to eat solo, to recovering from a breakup, to what guys really think of our butts (you'd be pleasantly surprised), to "vagazzling your vajayjay." (Yes, she really did it.) What it's not, Hewitt says, is The Rules for the 2010s.

"I read The Rules and all those other dating books and loved them, and I took little bits from each," she says. "But to remember 15 rules of what to say and what not to say, how to do it and how not to do it, that doesn't work. Once you're in a relationship, you can't wake up every day with a checklist of 15 things you have to do to make a man happy. Why are we the ones walking around with the checklists? They're allowed to read interesting books, and we read How to Make Yourself Better So a Man Will Love You."

So although Cupid offers plenty of romantic and sexual advice (our favorite: "Your body is a temple, not a 7-Eleven: You decide when it's open and who gets to come in"), at its heart, says Hewitt, it has one message: "You're great. You're fine. Believe that the universe has something better for you and it will come to you. We're all going to get the chance to have the great love of our life. I really believe that. But you won't do it by spending time trying to change yourself into someone you're not."

Get the Party Started

Hewitt entered the limelight young, catapulting to fame as Bailey's girlfriend, Sarah, on Fox's Party of Five series when she was just 16. Then she cemented her place in the teen-idol constellation two years later in the film I Know What You Did Last Summer. By 2000, when she was just 21, Hewitt was playing Audrey Hepburn in a TV biography and had become the most popular actor on television, according to the often-cited "Q ratings" of celebrity popularity.