In an interview with The New York Times, Melissa McCarthy finally responds to a critic's cruel comments on her weight, revealing that she is unfazed by such remarks.

Despite working in the world of Hollywood where weight and image are daily fodder for the media, McCarthy has built an outstanding career. She has won an Emmy, as well as another Emmy nomination, an Oscar nod, and roles in two $100 million-plus-grossing comedies in the past two years, CNN reports.

Perhaps this is why when The New York Observer's Rex Reed famously attacked McCarthy in his review of "Identity Thief" in February, she did not seem outwardly insulted. He called her "tractor-sized," a "female hippo," and "a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success."

McCarthy responded to the comments in The New York Times interview: "Really? Why would someone O.K. that?," she said in shock.

"I felt really bad for someone who is swimming in so much hate," McCarthy added. "I just thought, that's someone who's in a really bad spot, and I am in such a happy spot. I laugh my head off every day with my husband and my kids who are mooning me and singing me songs."

McCarthy, 42, admitted that if the comments had been made when she was 20, "it may have crushed me." But now that she's raising two young daughters "in a strange epidemic of body image and body dysmorphia," she said that comments like Reed's "just add to all those younger girls, that are not in a place in their life where they can say, 'That doesn't reflect on me.'"

More controversy about McCarthy's weight arose when a U.K. poster for her new movie "The Heat," also starring Sandra Bullock, visibly edited McCarthy's face by digitally slimming it down, TVGuide.com reports. A similar Photoshop effort was made for a one-sheet for McCarthy's movie "Bridesmaids," in which her neck and cheekbones were edited.