Cara quits the catwalk
She’ s quitting the cat walk and saving the universe!
With her flawlessflawles skin, trademark thick eyebrows and impressive array of A-list friends, she’s been described as the coolest girl in fashion. But it’s all over for “it girl” Cara Delevingne. She’s now a former supermodel – and she couldn’t be happier!
“I never really wanted to be a model at all,” Cara confesses to Woman’s Day. “I wanted to act from a very young age, but I thought you had to go to drama school. Because modelling had come to me first, I thought I could do that to make some money to pay for drama school. I never expected to be as big a model as I am.”
What Cara also didn’t anticipate was how modelling would pave the way to a career on the silver screen. Now that she’s starring in her seventh film in five years, the 24-yearold Brit has made it official – she’s retired her catwalk strut for good to concentrate on her acting career.
The film that convinced her to take the leap was the $240 million sci-fi blockbuster Valerian and the City of a
Thousand Planets, directed by French cult hero Luc Besson, which has just hit Kiwi screens and is laden with special effects from Wellington’s Weta Digital.
At our chat, Cara looks stunning in her designer duds and Christian Louboutin heels, but she quickly dispenses with compliments. She says, “People say to me, ‘You looked great in this or that photograph,’ but it doesn’t really feel like me. It’s a part I play and I’ve been playing that part for such a long time, it’s got a bit tiring.
“Plus, I want to grow as a person and modelling doesn’t really help because you spend all your time focusing on the outside when what’s really important is what’s on the inside.”
The actress – whose biggest role so far has been playing June Moone, aka The Enchantress, in the blockbuster Suicide
Squad – talks excitedly about being cast as a strong woman in Valerian and also raves about the performance of singer Rihanna, who has a supporting role in the film as Bubble, a shape-shifting burlesque dancer.
“I’ve known Ri for six years maybe, when she was doing the Victoria’s Secret show and
I was a model,” she recalls. “She’s turned into the amazing actress I always knew she’d be!”
Raised in London to parents from upper-class families, Cara was surrounded by aristocrats during her early yearsy and her Suicide Squad co-star Margot Robbie has teased in past interviews that after a few glasses of wine, she’s even been known to text Prince Harry.
But these days, the actress – whose other films also include
Pan and Paper Towns – admits she never felt like she belonged with the fashion or aristocratic crowd. “I was a feral child and a real tomboy who didn’t play with dolls. I wanted to build stuff and run around like a boy.”
However, she couldn’t escape her destiny when a family friend photographed her at age 10 for Vogue Italia and by the time she was 20, she’d become one of the most famous faces in the world.
Past loves
What’s even more surprising in this age of actors protecting their private lives is Cara’s openness about her bisexuality, as witnessed by high-profile romances with both men like One Direction’s Harry Styles,
and women, such as Fast and
Furious actress Michelle Rodriguez, and singer St Vincent.
“Gender should be fluid and it really shouldn’t matter whether you want to be a man or a woman,” she insists. “Those labels are so old-fashioned. We all grow up being labelled by parents and teachers, and the only way we can start to understand who we really are is to stop putting ourselves in boxes or explain ourselves to anyone.”
Currently single, Cara still describes herself as a “hopeless romantic” and adds, “I believe in love so much – I think it has the power to save the world and to save all of us.”
Next up, she’ll be seen in the romantic tearjerker Life in
a Year, starring opposite Will Smith’s son Jaden Smith, as a woman dying of cancer. She agreed to shave her head for the film and now sports a trim, pixie-style crop.
“I wouldn’t have done this without having to do it for a film, but I’ve learned something about hair along the way, which is that it’s definitely something you can use to hide behind,” Cara grins. “Without it, I feel a lot more open and a little more vulnerable, which is quite liberating.”