Orange is the New Black star Taylor Schilling loves her role as prisoner Piper Chapman in the hit Netflix series.

“I don’t feel bound by my face or my body,” the actress tells Allure magazine. “I don’t feel like that’s the biggest gift I have to offer the world. I feel like there are more parts of me to offer than that.”

Fortunately, playing Piper, who wears an orange prison jump suit, gives Taylor the opportunity to focus her attention on aspects of the role that don’t involve the way she looks or dresses.

“It’s totally liberating,” the 29-year-old actress confesses to the mag. “There’s freedom in not having to make it about how my jeans fit or what my boobs look like in a top. All I have to do now is play.”

As a young person, Taylor admits that she struggled with her image.

“It was tough at home, and it was tough at school,” she tells the magazine. “My experience was painful, so painful. There was a period of time I had very short hair, and I had glasses, and I was very tall for my age.”

Season two of Orange is the New Black premiered on Jun. 6.

Photo credit: Carter Smith for Allure