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" It&amp;#039;s a cold and rainy March morning in Nashville when country music megastar Faith Hill pulls into a parking spot in front of a cavernous photo studio. She&amp;#039;s dressed in her favorite comfy, casual style \u2014 gray sweats, tall black Uggs, a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and a hoodie sweatshirt \u2014 but she&amp;#039;s about to play some serious dress-up. For the next two days, Faith has agreed to ditch the sweats and leave her all-American look behind for the ultimate beauty makeover. So many of her fans already consider Faith an iconic blonde, and today her triple-threat transformation will capture the glamour, sensuality, and innocence of three of her favorite blonde icons: Grace Kelly, Brigitte Bardot, and Twiggy. And Faith has done her homework. Armed with a stack of photos for reference, the 41-year-old singer heads to the hair and makeup room.  Fast-forward past nearly 20 total hours of primping, painting, pinning, and plucking, and the results are extraordinary. Faith Hill channels her own inner 16-year-old to portray the wide-eyed face of the 1960s model Twiggy; conveys the tousled passion of bombshell Brigitte Bardot, the 1950s French actress; and, most strikingly, becomes the alter ego of dazzling &amp;#039;50s actress-turned-princess Grace Kelly by drawing on her own refined Southern elegance.  See Faith&amp;#039;s iconic REDBOOK covers and go behind the scenes at her glamorous photo shoot! When all this role-playing is over, the wife of country legend Tim McGraw and mother of three girls (Gracie, 12, Maggie, 10, and Audrey, 7) has no problem snapping back to reality. She washes her face, pulls her hair into a ponytail, and slips back into those sweats. Has she discovered anything from stepping into such glamorous shoes? &amp;quot;At the end of the day, for me beauty has a lot to do with comfort and being around my family. And,&amp;quot; she says with a laugh, &amp;quot;most likely no makeup!&amp;quot; Then, with a big hug and a cheery &amp;quot;Thank you!&amp;quot; to everyone on set, she&amp;#039;s off to meet Tim at the girls&amp;#039; school for a basketball game. These are the moments Faith says she feels most beautiful. This is our all-American sweetheart at her very best.  How did you decide on Grace Kelly, Brigitte Bardot, and Twiggy as the three iconic blondes you wanted to portray?  When REDBOOK came to me with this idea \u2014 of taking on the persona of three iconic beauties \u2014 I just loved it. I thought it was important that each of these blondes was unique in her style, her background, and her personality. Twiggy represented the mod look of the &amp;#039;60s, while Grace was more about a certain classic elegance and beauty, and Brigitte was more defined by her sensuality and her sexuality. What did you see when you looked in the mirror as Twiggy?  It was hard for me to look at myself as Twiggy. I think she was in her late teens when the original photo was taken. And there is a very big difference between a teenager and a 41-year-old! [Laughing] And I&amp;#039;m not talking about the lines on the eyes of a 41-year-old versus a teenager; I&amp;#039;m talking about the wisdom that comes as you get older. You can see through to the soul with the eyes, and with Twiggy, I felt she had such an innocence. When I first looked at myself in the mirror, I saw a maturity and wisdom that Twiggy had not yet experienced. Her version was beautiful and flawless, but for me, as a woman who&amp;#039;s come into her own a little more comfortably, it&amp;#039;s just a different kind of beauty.  Of the three women you were transformed into, whom did you feel most connected to?  Grace is probably the one that I relate to the most in my life and the one that I have most in common with. My mother-in-law has always told me that I remind her of Grace Kelly. I think it&amp;#039;s about how I carry myself, how I look in photographs, that sort of thing. I think, too, it&amp;#039;s probably that I have this seemingly high-profile life, like Grace did, and that we were both the mother of three children. In my opinion, she epitomizes the all-American girl with a quiet class and inner strength. She was like everybody&amp;#039;s girl \u2014 seemingly comfortable and accessible \u2014 and yet untouchable.  What did you connect to with Brigitte?   To be completely candid, I felt least like Brigitte of all three of the women we did. I&amp;#039;ve referenced her, read about her, and seen so much on her during my career, though, that there&amp;#039;s a part of her that I can really understand and relate to. To me, sexuality is very different from sensuality. And Brigitte possesses this sensual essence that is so powerful. She is always sexy, no matter what, but it isn&amp;#039;t in that blatant, trying-to-be-sexy way; it&amp;#039;s more that it is just a part of her that can&amp;#039;t be denied. Please don&amp;#039;t get me wrong, I am not saying that I&amp;#039;m even one tenth as sensual as that woman is, but if I could possess that kind of sensuality, I would want to possess it like she does.  Beyonc\u00E9 created an alter ego named Sasha Fierce who helps her channel a wilder side. Do you have a Sasha buried within?  Oh, yeah. This is difficult for me to explain to people who don&amp;#039;t live a double life like I do. When I am in my everyday world in Nashville, I&amp;#039;m running around, being a mom, and doing the home things I do; my hair is usually tied back in a ponytail. Then when I&amp;#039;m filming a video or going on stage, it&amp;#039;s almost like I&amp;#039;m putting on a different persona. Something happens. I need to step back from that everyday Faith and be the dress-up girl. The big heels, smoky eyes, and right wardrobe help. I&amp;#039;ll walk off stage after a performance, and someone will say to me, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve never seen you do that before,&amp;quot; and sometimes I&amp;#039;m not even aware of what I&amp;#039;ve done. It&amp;#039;s a matter of getting lost in the music and the moment. It&amp;#039;s like therapy. It&amp;#039;s a freeing of the soul. See Faith&amp;#039;s iconic REDBOOK covers and go behind the scenes at her glamorous photo shoot! What do you try to teach your girls about beauty so a bad hair day doesn&amp;#039;t become a crisis?  Our oldest is a tween, so I&amp;#039;m sure we will be seeing those kinds of revelations soon. But mostly, we have tried to lay the foundation for the girls to have a sense of self-worth that goes way beyond anything that&amp;#039;s not real or achievable. As a family, we always talk about being healthy and how beauty comes in so many different shapes and sizes. We talk about being happy and active and how having a good mind is the most important thing. I always tell the girls that having knowledge of things and ideas will serve them more than anything else in the long run.  How do you define beauty for yourself now, and how has that definition changed for you?  Beauty for me has a lot to do with happiness and a certain confidence deep inside. People can see both of those things on your face. As I get older, I&amp;#039;m learning much more about how to better take care of myself and the things that do and don&amp;#039;t work for me. I know this probably sounds so elementary, but I was a late bloomer in this department. I have a routine now that I&amp;#039;ve been able to see results from. I feel like I&amp;#039;m putting in this new effort to take care of myself, and I can see the benefits from it. And I don&amp;#039;t have to be all decked out to feel that way.  So you&amp;#039;re not one of those people who&amp;#039;s afraid to leave the house without makeup on?  Now, I&amp;#039;m not saying I shouldn&amp;#039;t be one of those people [laughing], because I have lots of freckles, and as I get older those freckles, which were once cute, become other things. But honestly, I don&amp;#039;t even think about makeup. Sometimes if we&amp;#039;re going to a function at the girls&amp;#039; school, I&amp;#039;ll throw on a little mascara and maybe a little concealer and lipstick. A lot of that has to do with time. Do I want to spend an extra half hour in my bathroom, or would I rather be with the girls?  How is your new beauty routine different from what you used to do?   I think the biggest change was learning how to stick to a routine every night. Cleaning my face, moisturizing my entire body after I get out of the bath or shower \u2014 around my eyes and my face, even my lips. I&amp;#039;ve learned to keep multiple tubes of moisturizer all around my house \u2014 everywhere: in my kitchen, in my purse, in my car. I&amp;#039;ve also started to drink a ton of water, which is something I never used to do.  Are bad beauty and hair days a thing of the past?  Are you kidding me? My biggest problem has always been my hair. I have really curly hair \u2014 and it&amp;#039;s not that pretty curly hair, which is why I almost always put it back in a ponytail. It just never turns out right, no matter how hard I try. See Faith&amp;#039;s iconic REDBOOK covers and go behind the scenes at her glamorous photo shoot! Do exercise and eating fit into your new beauty regime?  Oh, yeah, that&amp;#039;s been a big change. It&amp;#039;s part of the whole picture. I actually figured it all out last summer \u2014 and it all has to do with laziness! [Laughs] I was aging pretty well, but I wasn&amp;#039;t really committed to working out and eating right. And it&amp;#039;s not that I diet now, but I&amp;#039;ve just become conscious of what I put into my body, because I know what I put in it is also going to show on the outside.  Have you had to forsake Southern cooking and comfort foods, like fried chicken and macaroni and cheese?   I still do cook them, but not every night like I used to. I try to stay with a lot more fresh fruits and vegetables. A lot of the food we eat is fresh from my parents&amp;#039; garden. Once a week I&amp;#039;ll cook a Southern comfort meal, because that&amp;#039;s where Tim and I come from and it is truly comfort food; there&amp;#039;s nothing like it. I mean, I&amp;#039;m sorry, but we will run miles for a fried pork chop!  How do you overcome your &amp;quot;laziness&amp;quot; to stay healthy when you have so much going on?  It&amp;#039;s difficult, but it is absolutely a choice. Once I get home, it&amp;#039;s very difficult to get me out of the house again. I love to piddle around and find something to reorganize that will distract me from working out. But once I saw the benefits of a healthier lifestyle, it just became so worth it to me, physically and psychologically. Like when this invitation came up to do REDBOOK, I wasn&amp;#039;t really planning on it, but I was ready because I&amp;#039;ve been taking care of myself. In the old days, I might have turned it down because I didn&amp;#039;t feel good about myself or didn&amp;#039;t think I could pull it off.  You&amp;#039;ve been very involved in the new fragrance you have coming out this fall, from Coty. What were some of your inspirations?  I wanted it to be something I would purchase on my own if it weren&amp;#039;t my own fragrance. It&amp;#039;s my name, and it&amp;#039;s my fragrance, and I wanted to be involved in it every step of the way. You know how it is when you smell something that really resonates with you because it takes you back to a time and place where you remember something that felt good? That&amp;#039;s what I wanted for this fragrance. For me, that was something that smelled clean; a little Oriental, which plays into the sensual side of my personality; lots of floral \u2014 jasmine, magnolia, and neroli, which are all flowers that I grew up with and bring back an immediate sense of my childhood. But I can&amp;#039;t tell you everything about it now, because it&amp;#039;s not coming out until early fall. See Faith&amp;#039;s iconic REDBOOK covers and go behind the scenes at her glamorous photo shoot! You&amp;#039;ve got a new album coming up too. Can you give us a little preview into what we can expect?  I&amp;#039;m in the middle of working on the album right now, so it&amp;#039;s hard to really talk about it in detail because it&amp;#039;s still a work in progress. I can tell you this: It&amp;#039;s soulful and relevant.  What have been the up- and downsides of hitting your 40s?  I&amp;#039;m not sure I&amp;#039;ve really focused on the downside; I&amp;#039;d have to make something up to answer your question. To me there are just a lot more upsides. And I didn&amp;#039;t always think that way. Now, I&amp;#039;m not saying I don&amp;#039;t look in the mirror and say, &amp;quot;That line wasn&amp;#039;t there yesterday.&amp;quot; But you know what? I have had lines on my neck since I was a child. I look back at old pictures from grade school, and I had lines on my neck. Audrey, our 7-year-old, and Maggie, our 10-year-old, have lines on their necks. That&amp;#039;s just the way we were created. They&amp;#039;re cute at 7 and 10, not quite so cute at 41. But I try not to focus on that. Taking better care of myself has helped a lot; there&amp;#039;s this quiet confidence that comes with it.  When do you feel most beautiful these days?  I feel most beautiful when I&amp;#039;m squeaky clean and comfortable. I have no makeup on and it&amp;#039;s the end of the day and we&amp;#039;re all home and showered. Everything&amp;#039;s done, and I can relax and spend time with my children. And when I look into my husband&amp;#039;s eyes.  Has that quiet confidence you&amp;#039;ve found been inspired by other parts of your life as well?  Or has it come mostly from learning to listen better to what you need? Really, it&amp;#039;s my kids that give me the most confidence. After I had my three daughters, I felt I could accomplish absolutely anything I wanted to in my life. There is a strength that comes with giving birth to children. As they&amp;#039;re getting older, their needs are so evident on a daily basis, but also their need for independence. Watching each of them establish their independence and seeing them put it to good use gives me strength and confidence. My first thoughts every single day of my life are my kids and my family, and my last thoughts before going to bed at night are my kids and my family. And somehow, in the midst of all this, I&amp;#039;ve found a little more time to take better care of myself. As I&amp;#039;ve come to enjoy and appreciate my body, I&amp;#039;ve also discovered a newfound love for style. I&amp;#039;m even learning how to live outside of sweatpants a little more! So a lot of good things happen when you are growing up, and that&amp;#039;s what I like to say: I&amp;#039;m growing up. I&amp;#039;m learning not to sweat the small things. I know it sounds contrived, but it&amp;#039;s just so very, very true. See Faith&amp;#039;s iconic REDBOOK covers and go behind the scenes at her glamorous photo shoot! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a4945/faith-hill-interview/>