Cara Delevingne quits modelling and takes on Hollywood
She’s a society girl, supermodel and movie actress. But who would really want this 23-year-old’s life?
Cara Delevingne fixes me with green Siamese cat’s eyes, jiggling a slim foot in a high-heeled black sandal.
“I am not doing fashion work anymore after having, like, psoriasis and all that stuff,” she says. “Modelling just made me feel a bit hollow after a while. It didn’t make me grow at all as a human being. And I kind of forgot how young I was … I felt so old.”
This is Cara Delevingne, 23, the face of campaigns from Chanel to Topshop, talking about her career in the past tense. It is unexpected, because even though she has five movies out this year, everyone assumed she would just keep on doing what appears to be second nature.
Key facts about Delevingne: she’s the model with the dark, unplucked eyebrows, which spearheaded a trend. She is well connected: her granny was a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, her godmother is Joan Collins, and she is best friends with Rihanna and Taylor Swift. Her big break was landing the Burberry campaign in 2011.
Delevingne has never presented an idealised version of her life to the ever-watchful public. While other models upload pictures of themselves to Instagram looking cute in yoga kit, her signature is goofing about, tongue lolling, doing the double thumbs up while wearing wacky clothes, often beside her glamorous friends (a recent picture with Swift got a million likes on Instagram). She recently posted a video of paparazzi chasing her in a golf buggy with the caption, “Run paps!!! RUNNNNNN.” She eats pizza, she wears onesies, she gets crazy tattoos (a lion’s head on her forefinger), she doesn’t seem to be remotely up herself, and yet everything about her life is memorable and glamorous. All of which translates into a massive social media presence — 17 million Instagram followers plus 3.41 million Twitter followers.
Still, does she really want to burn her bridges with the industry that put her on the map? “I like beauty,” she says in a soft, husky voice. “But what does it mean? If you feel horrible on the inside you are ugly.” I get the impression she is not at home in designer gear. She’s a beer-from-the-bottle girl rather than a champagne sipper. She says she’s never really felt like a model. “I like fashion, but …” she waves a tattooed hand in the air. “I am a tomboy. I don’t really like heels or make-up.”
Almost from the get-go, she suffered from the skin condition psoriasis. “I was working too much,” she says. “I didn’t say no to anything, and that is obviously my own fault, but …” One legendary eyebrow floats upwards. “People should have stopped me at some point.” It got so bad, I’d heard, that backstage at one of the shows they were painting her body with foundation before sending her down the catwalk. “It wasn’t just one show. It was every single show. People would put on gloves and not want to touch me because they thought it was, like, leprosy or something.”
Still, she was the hot girl of the moment. “It wasn’t a good time,” she says quietly. “I was, like, fight and flight for months. Just constantly on edge. It is a mental thing as well because if you hate yourself and your body and the way you look, it just gets worse and worse.” When I suggest the hard partying for which she is renowned can’t have helped, she looks hurt. “No, because at that point I wasn’t going out. I wasn’t allowed to — I was on such strong medication.”
So far there isn’t much evidence of the mischievous Cara Delevingne. She’s friendly and chipper and bright-eyed, but I am getting the faintest whiff of buried sadness. Or maybe she’s just tired. “Well, I do keep going until I run into a wall, which is something I am learning not to do,” she says. Did she actually hit a wall? “It felt like a wall to me, but then I feel like the wall is death.” She squirms, laughs a nervous, croaky laugh. “That sounds terrible, I know. It sounds really bad, doesn’t it?” A few days later I read in US Vogue that, by the time she took a rest from modelling, she was having suicidal thoughts.
Kate Moss has said that at the start of her own career she was traumatised by the things she was asked to do — nudity, sexually suggestive poses — yet it never occurred to her that she could say no. Delevingne glowers. “I am a bit of a feminist and it makes me feel sick,” she says. “It’s horrible and it’s disgusting. You start when you are really young and you do, you get subjected to … not great stuff.” She’s on a roll now, eyes wide and intense. “As time went on, I got to say no to things I couldn’t say no to before. But, especially when I was younger, you feel like if you don’t go along with what people say, then you will fail, you won’t get a job.” Or be branded difficult to work with? “Yes, which is not true.”
Pervy male photographers and their creepy enabler stylists are one of fashion’s dirty little secrets. “I don’t think it’s just modelling,” she says. “In every industry, if you are pretty, or someone likes the look of you …” She gives a rueful smile. “It’s not good.” Has she experienced this in her nascent acting career too? She looks away. “A little, yeah.” She falls silent for a moment. “I honestly thought going into acting there wouldn’t be any of that, but yeah.”
Delevingne seems world-weary and sophisticated at times, and at others puppyish and a bit all over the place. She is gorgeous, and yet — despite the smoky eye make-up and the on-show bra — she’s not really sexy. Beautiful in a feline way, but somehow switched off. Maybe that stems from her upbringing. She comes from a well-connected Chelsea family — her father is a property developer, her mother was a socialite and is now a personal shopper, rumoured to help the Duchess of Cambridge, and her grandfather was Sir Jocelyn Stevens, publisher of the high-society magazine Queen. It’s fair to say she is used to mixing with the rich and the racy. Her mother, Pandora, was a heroin addict; her relapses may have been the defining fact of Delevingne’s childhood. She told US Vogue: “It shapes the childhood of every kid whose parent has an addiction. You grow up too quickly because you’re parenting your parents.” By 15 it had all become too much. “I was hit with a massive wave of depression and anxiety and self-hatred, where the feelings were so painful that I would slam my head against a tree to try to knock myself out,” she said.
I was expecting Delevingne to be an average actor. But she’s good in Paper Towns, and her upcoming films have real calibre: Mandela director Justin Chadwick’s Tulip Fever, starring Judi Dench; an adaptation of Martin Amis’s London Fields, with Johnny Depp; Pan with Hugh Jackman and Rooney Mara; and Suicide Squad with Will Smith and Margot Robbie.
She is proud, she says, to have held her nerve and waited for the right parts. It’s important to her that she is taken seriously and that she’s playing roles young women can relate to. A recent Instagram post reads: “I was born to be real, not to be perfect.” She’s beautiful and privileged, but she’s had it tough. She’s a seen-it-all sophisticate and a damaged kid who says she has been hurt most by women, “starting with my mother”.
Romantically, she’s been linked to One Direction’s Harry Styles and several women; she’s now in a relationship with musician Annie Clark, better known as St Vincent. Delevingne has spoken about being in love with Clark, but also says she is attracted to men, has erotic dreams “only about men”, and can imagine marrying a man and having kids. It’s all mixed up, genuine, extremely modern and very good for business.
So who looks after her? Her girlfriend, probably, who is 10 years older. Her London friends, who have known her since school. And her celebrity family — Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Rita Ora and co. “Those guys! If I hadn’t met them I would be the loneliest sod in the world. It’s so great being able to talk to someone who understands.”
I really hope acting is the answer. Delevingne certainly thinks it is. “I have regained respect for myself, in a weird way, and on a movie set is where I feel like I belong. If that makes any sense.”
It does. Delevingne has been playing a part for as long as she can remember.
© The Times
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