This was published 1 year ago
‘It was a nightmare to go out with him’: When your great mate’s a model
Nightclub door girl turned style maven Dijanna Mulhearn, 55, has spent three decades navigating fashion’s fickle currents with model and actor Jeff Holm, 59 – while also dealing with his annoyingly irresistible allure to other women.
Dijanna Mulhearn and Jeff Holm: “He’s always had my back,” she says, “but I’m always in awe of the lengths people go to get his attention.”Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Dijanna: Jeffrey and I met in the 1980s. I was about 19 and working on the door of a nightclub, The Cauldron, in Sydney’s Darlinghurst. It was where all the famous people went: socialites, captains of industry, models from overseas. Jeffrey was one of those.
My first impression was he was just another pretty American model here for the summer. It’s not that I didn’t think he was exceptional: working at a nightclub, I’m negotiating 800 personalities a night. We then flatted together for a while with another guy who was also a model. That was a mistake. The phone rang till 2am every night. Girls calling, mates calling. It was incessant. And no one was calling me.
Early on, people were confused about our friendship. We’ve slept in the same bed many times, but nothing romantically physical has ever happened – not even a drunken kiss.
It was a nightmare to go out with him because of all the other women. One night, we were at a bar and this girl wedged herself between us, with her back to me, and started flirting with Jeffrey. He told her to get lost. He’s always had my back, but I’m always in awe of the lengths people go to get his attention.
That night, he’d been telling me about his mum. She’d been married six times and Jeff is the only product of her first marriage. That explained a lot about him: how he could drift in and out so quickly, make friends fast but dissociate when he needed to.
A few years later, before I met my husband, Paul, Jeffrey would come over to my place at 10pm and say, “You’re never gonna meet anyone sitting in your apartment. Come on.” I’d put on lippie, brush my hair and he’d take me to various nightclubs. Inevitably, within half an hour, he’d come up to me with a $5 note and go, “Oh, I’ve just met someone. Could you [use this to get home]?” I’d snatch it off him and say, “I knew this would happen.” When it happened again, I increased the rate: “Now, it’s $10 to get home.” Then $15. He was transparent about it all; he never just disappeared.
“Girls calling, mates calling. It was incessant. And no one was calling me.”
One day, he came over and showed me pictures of him with a woman in a white suit. He said, “This is the girl I told you I’ve been seeing. What do you think’s happening here?” I asked him if he’d married this person and, when he said yes, I said, “Get out!” I was so mad I was beside myself. Paul calmed me down, saying maybe Jeffrey hadn’t introduced her beforehand because, after all the girlfriends, I wouldn’t have let him marry someone he’d only known for eight months. I met Rachel, his wife, a few months later and, oh, she was just a ray of sunshine.
In October 2009, four days before their first child, Sierra, was due to be born, they found out that she’d passed. He rang me that morning. My heart sank. It was so black. Some men in that situation would have run away or put up defences or found a coping mechanism: Jeffrey was all-in on the grieving with Rachel, looking after her and himself. They were already close, but losing Sierra created a bond that will not break. When I was working on the nightclub door, everyone was nice to me but no one bothered to get to know me, except Jeffrey. He’s made me a better person. Don’t tell him that.
Jeff: My friendship with Dijanna has been the slowest of burns over the years. We started just hanging, living together as roommates. We had fun. We got along. There was never anything romantic in it at all. It’s normal for Americans to have guy-girl relationships. When I first came to Australia, I could see there was a separation between men and women socially. Our friendship was probably more unusual for Dijanna.
There was one time I was “tested”, shall we say. It was the early 1990s. Dijanna was back after four years overseas and I’d been in and out of the country, mainly working in Europe. We met up to play pool and, when she turned up, she looked like Jessica Rabbit. Her figure! She looked absolutely amazing! I sat there staring. Then I said to myself, “Remember, you’re friends. Don’t mess that up.” I’d had enough life experience to know the only thing to come out of this was that I wouldn’t have a friend any more.
Dijanna’s a woman of many hats. Once she puts whichever hat on, she nails it. She decides to write her first book [Wardrobe 101: Creating Your Perfect Core Wardrobe]. Boom, it’s a very successful book. She’s opening an event agency. Boom, successful. One minute, she’s starting a fashion brand, the next she’s running Prada’s PR. It was always, “You’re what?”
“When I first came to Australia, I could see there was a separation between men and women socially. Our friendship was probably more unusual for Dijanna.”
She didn’t like any of my girlfriends. That was such a constant it was almost hilarious. She was nice about it, though. After each breakup she’d say, “I didn’t really think she was right for you.” Rachel has been the exception.
Our opening line to each other is always, “Have you got any gossip, news or scandal?” A few years ago I said, “You’re not going to believe this: I’ve got three sisters!” My dad, who split from my mum when I was two and died when I was 10, had fathered three daughters I didn’t know about. I said to Dijanna, “Have you ever got me better than this?”
When I called Dijanna from the hospital about Sierra, it was just horrific news to give someone: you’re pulling them into your grief. I could hear her saying, “Oh, my god. Oh, my god.” When you go through that kind of grief together – my wife, Dijanna and me – you become a lot closer. She’s family.
Dijanna’s a wordsmith. At The Cauldron, she could strip you down in seconds with five words: guys with macho attitudes, rock stars who were dicks, she’d go snap, snap, snap! They were like, “What just happened?”
You know what? She might have been my one really solid anchor as I travelled around the world. She is my loyal, consistent friend.
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