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" At last, LeAnn Rimes is all grown up. After all, it&amp;#039;s been more than 10 years since she became the teen sensation with that big, powerful voice. But nonetheless, I&amp;#039;m still not entirely prepared when the 25-year-old country superstar strides confidently toward me across a Los Angeles photography studio in a pair of mile-high, glitter-encrusted, look-at-me heels. This isn&amp;#039;t a sweet young thing. This is a Bond girl. And no one&amp;#039;s getting in her way.  Ever since she was thrust into the spotlight at age 13 with her hit song &amp;quot;Blue,&amp;quot; LeAnn has matured with an uncommon amount of grace. One year later, she became the youngest person ever to win a Grammy: Best New Artist of 1996 and Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Life as a teen star wasn&amp;#039;t always easy. At age 17, she sued her father for siphoning off $7 million of her earnings. But they&amp;#039;ve since reconciled, and now she wants to build her own family with her husband of five-and-a-half years, dancer Dean Sheremet.  Just watching LeAnn and Dean together today at the REDBOOK cover shoot, it&amp;#039;s easy to see that they have a strong bond.  &amp;quot;Getting married is probably the best thing I&amp;#039;ve ever done,&amp;quot; she says, grinning at Dean, who shows his devotion by slicing the flesh off a plum and feeding it to her as she sits still for the makeup artist. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s such a great leveler for me.&amp;quot;  With the October release of her 10th studio album, Family, LeAnn is starting to speak her mind about her most intimate relationships. It&amp;#039;s the first time she&amp;#039;s had a hand in writing every song on her CD, and much of the material is autobiographical. For an artist who typically works from material others have written for her, it&amp;#039;s a risky step outside of her comfort zone. But taking the safe route is not on the agenda for LeAnn, who also will soon be acting in the independent film Good Intentions (out next year). &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m jumping right in and doing things that scare me,&amp;quot; LeAnn says later that afternoon, curled up catlike in the corner of a couch in her dressing room. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve learned a lot about myself and my capabilities.&amp;quot; Here are some more of her thoughts on living fearlessly. So many of the songs on your new album are about your experiences growing up and doubts and questions you&amp;#039;ve faced. What&amp;#039;s it like to sing personal material to huge live audiences?  It&amp;#039;s been great. Standing ovations for songs people don&amp;#039;t even know. &amp;quot;What I Cannot Change&amp;quot; is a very personal song for me. It&amp;#039;s about letting go of things I can&amp;#039;t change and never being afraid to be the person I want to be. I wrote it with a good friend of mine \u2014 I had gone to his house one time and was venting about life and how I felt I was moving forward as a woman. There was a big struggle going on inside me: I was trying to figure out how to incorporate people I love so dearly but who were not growing with me or were resistant to my growth, whether they were parents or friends. People I never would want to dismiss from my life, but it was a struggle to realize I can&amp;#039;t change them. [Lyrics from &amp;quot;What I Cannot Change&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know my father or my mother well enough. It seems like every time we talk we can&amp;#039;t get past the little stuff&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s easier to please the world than it is to please myself.&amp;quot;] Everyone has experienced that feeling, so people really connect with the song. The first time I performed it, in Vegas, I tried not to open my eyes because I knew somebody would be crying. If I saw them I would fall apart. At the end of the song, the whole crowd was bawling. I lost it.  Do you feel like it&amp;#039;s still a big struggle to accept who you are? I&amp;#039;m still working on it. [Laughs] It&amp;#039;s tough being in the spotlight for so long. Especially growing up as that 13-year-old all-American girl with no one in this world wanting to see me change. I didn&amp;#039;t know anything else except being &amp;quot;LeAnn Rimes&amp;quot; [she hangs a pair of air quotes]. Now, after being married for five-and-a-half years, I&amp;#039;m trying to figure out who I should be and trying to make that strong separation between the public and the private LeAnn. And it&amp;#039;s a time for me to be incredibly honest. It&amp;#039;s been a great process, but it makes me feel very vulnerable.  Has your honesty affected your relationships with your parents or your friends? No; if anything, it&amp;#039;s made them stronger. I&amp;#039;m a very emotional person and very vocal about how I feel, and even more so in my music. I don&amp;#039;t have very close relationships with my aunts and uncles or even with my mom and dad sometimes. We&amp;#039;ve been through a lot. Usually we have a very good relationship, but sometimes I wish I could dig a little deeper and really talk about important things. I was performing the other night in Mississippi, and in one of my songs I talk about my uncle who died of AIDS when I was 9 or 10. He was very special to me and we&amp;#039;ve never talked about his death in my family since I&amp;#039;ve been an adult. So when I came to that song, I was suddenly afraid of what my parents would think when they heard about it. I was like, Oh, crap. What am I going to do? But I had to tell myself, This is something I need to get out. And it felt so good to do.  It sounds like writing this album has been a cathartic experience.  It&amp;#039;s been kind of therapy. It came at that time in my life where I needed to be comfortable with being me and putting it all out there. Not only do I have this voice, but now I&amp;#039;m a woman and an artist on top of it. Even though I&amp;#039;ve had success with other people&amp;#039;s music, all of a sudden I have it with my own.  You got married pretty young. How did marriage change your sense of yourself?  When Dean and I got married I was 19. I was very much in love and still am. We were engaged three weeks after we met -- I don&amp;#039;t know how we did it, but we did. And we have a wonderful relationship. He&amp;#039;s so much fun. That&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s so great about him. I was so focused and so uptight when it came to how I was doing in my business. But he grew up with a very normal childhood and was a goofball. It was a great balance for me.  How did you know he&amp;#039;s the one?  I just knew; we both knew. I knew people were going to think we were crazy. My friends and family really felt the blow of what people were saying at the time \u2014 you should have heard what other people said to us. It&amp;#039;s so funny that people think they have the right. Now I think, Hey, we&amp;#039;ve been married for five-and-a-half years! It&amp;#039;s hard to face all that criticism. It is, but it taught me to learn a lot about myself really quick. I&amp;#039;m learning more and more every day, and honestly, I&amp;#039;m scaring the s--t out of myself a lot of the time, too.  How did you and Dean learn to ride through the challenges of marriage at such a young age?  Dean and I have really grown up together. We&amp;#039;ve seen a lot of the same things and have the same views. If we wait a couple more years to have kids, we&amp;#039;ll have been married long enough to have such a great base. We also both come from broken homes \u2014 Dean&amp;#039;s parents divorced when he was 2, mine divorced when I was 13 \u2014 and it&amp;#039;s so important for both of us to give our child a very stable environment.  Have you thought about when kids might enter the equation?  We talk about it often. We also talk about the huge responsibility. We wake up some mornings and say, &amp;quot;What would we do if we had a kid? How would we work this?&amp;quot; Dean travels with me wherever I go, so it&amp;#039;s going to be a huge responsibility for him. He said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d probably be the one taking care of him or her, while you&amp;#039;re working.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;re trying to figure out when it&amp;#039;s going to be best for our lives to change. Did you always want kids?  I actually thought of adopting more than I did pushing one out. I&amp;#039;m a little freaked out by it. But when I met Dean \u2014 I know how compassionate he is about children. So now I want to have a child of ours. I might love being pregnant \u2014 you never know. I&amp;#039;m keeping a very open mind about the whole thing. But I do want children, definitely. That&amp;#039;s part of my life I don&amp;#039;t want to miss out on, and I have a lot of love to give that way. I can&amp;#039;t wait.  How do you de-stress?  I&amp;#039;m a big yoga girl. I&amp;#039;m a big outdoors person, too. I love to be active. We just got into cycling. I just love to be outdoors, by the beach or with friends with a really good glass of wine. That&amp;#039;s the best thing in the world. And I love Grey&amp;#039;s Anatomy. What made you decide to give acting a shot?  I found this great film, Good Intentions, with a great part. I never wanted to just be another singer that started to act. Then a very good friend of mine, who directed the film, sent me this script. It&amp;#039;s a dark comedy. The first day was terrifying. The second day was amazing. I jumped right in and had a lot of fun.  Do you have a strategy for conquering your fears? Just do it. Seriously. You should have seen me two days before I went to shoot the film: &amp;quot;What am I doing? I can&amp;#039;t do this.&amp;quot; I was freaking out. My husband, I think he was my strategy. He was like, &amp;quot;Just shut up. You&amp;#039;re going to do this. I&amp;#039;m not letting you back out.&amp;quot; As long as I know I&amp;#039;m doing what I can do at this moment, there&amp;#039;s nothing to be scared of. But keeping that frame of mind is hard to do sometimes. For me, it&amp;#039;s wanting to do it to perfection, wanting to give 100 percent every time. Even onstage, I can&amp;#039;t do that every night. So as long as I&amp;#039;m giving 100 percent of where I&amp;#039;m at at that moment, that&amp;#039;s all I can ask of myself.  So many young pop stars hit the self-destruct button when they reach your age. How do you stay grounded and centered?  I feel like it&amp;#039;s been my parents who overall did a great job raising me. I have a lot more respect for myself than to let myself go off the deep end, though I&amp;#039;ve had my moments, God knows. [LeAnn laughs and hits her head with her hand.] I&amp;#039;ve had things to work with, private things. I didn&amp;#039;t want to air all the dirty laundry in public. But I do have huge respect for myself. When you start so young, people are waiting for you to screw up. Then I got married, and having Dean around.... It&amp;#039;s nice to have people to remind you to be you, not the person you have to be in front of everyone else. But recently, I feel like I am actually being myself more in front of everyone else, in front of the world. That&amp;#039;s such a great feeling: to be able to be yourself. You have to take a little more flak for it, but oh, well. I&amp;#039;m happier as a human being. Working Girl  Right from the get-go, LeAnn impressed us all with her work ethic by arriving at the Los Angeles photo studio an hour early. Her professionalism didn&amp;#039;t stop there. &amp;quot;When I asked if she wanted to take a break later in the day,&amp;quot; recalls Bruce Perez, REDBOOK&amp;#039;s photo director, &amp;quot;she said, &amp;#039;Nope, I&amp;#039;m here to work,&amp;#039; and we plowed right on through until we were done.&amp;quot;  Pack It In LeAnn was heading out on the road a couple of weeks after the July shoot for a late summer tour, leading up to the fall release of her new album, Family. She told us that she actually loves packing her suitcase, though she has a hard time deciding what to take. (We can relate!) &amp;quot;She said she ends up packing three of everything,&amp;quot; said Bruce, &amp;quot;because she doesn&amp;#039;t want it to be her assistant&amp;#039;s fault if she&amp;#039;s missing something.&amp;quot;  Nashville Sophisticate  Browsing through the clothes the stylist brought, LeAnn was drawn to a polished look. She liked streamlined dresses, blouses, and pants by high-end designers such as Dolce &amp;amp;amp; Gabbana, Nicole Miller, and Pegah Anvarian.  No Diva Here  What stood out the most on this beautiful star? &amp;quot;Her smile,&amp;quot; said Bruce. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s very genuine and she&amp;#039;s a genuine person.&amp;quot; She was easygoing and approachable all day, gabbing with everyone on the set, from the makeup artists to the photography assistant to the production crew. --Elizabeth Lewis WIN CONCERT TICKETS! Win two tickets to the Leann Rimes concert nearest you! Go to redbookmag.com/leannrimes to enter. 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