Eric McCormack was once told by his own manager to shed a few pounds if he ever wanted to make it in Hollywood.

The "Will and Grace" star said that he was auditioning for a role for Jenny McCarthy's show "Jenny" in 1997 when his manager said his face was carrying too much weight.
"It's very easy in a Calgary winter when you have a beard and several layers of clothing to disguise what beer will do to a man," he said during a recent remote interview for 92Y. "And when the beard came off — Wow! I was not going to be on 'Melrose Place' the next day, let's put it that way and I was in denial about it."
He added, "I'd gone in and I'd done really well and it looked like it was going to go my way but the next audition — the final audition — wasn't for two weeks. My manager at the time … God bless her, she said, 'You've got two weeks … get your face back.'"

Eric, who was born in Canada, got the role in the pilot. The comments, he said, were a "very big turning point."
He added, "By the time I got to the pilot … I had discovered the new unbearded me."