Mental illness is something we all need to talk about
Supermodel-turned-actress and writer Cara Delevingne talks to HANNAH STEPHENSON about teenage troubles and how she is now living the dream on screen
SHE may look the picture of confidence on the catwalks, but supermodel-turnedactress Cara Delevingne wasn’t always the seemingly fearless fashion icon she is now.
The 25-year-old, whose net worth is rumoured to be £14m, admits to channelling a lot of her own teenage angst into her debut YA novel, Mirror Mirror. It centres on four misfit teens who form their own family through a band, as they attempt to deal with the challenges adolescence throws at them.
Some might wonder what this girl from a privileged background – her father, Charles, is a successful property developer and she grew up in the elite enclave of London’s Belgravia – had to worry about.
However, she has said that while growing up, she never felt good enough and felt pretty weird and different as a child – so she can feel the loneliness of her characters, Red, Leo, Rose and Naomi.
“Growing up in London, the angst, the hormones, starting to figure out who you are and what you want to do, and hating yourself and loving yourself and looking at other people, you realise that at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks,” says Cara. “It just comes down to who you are and who you want to be, and if you don’t know who that is, it doesn’t matter.
“If it’s weird and if you want to chop your hair off or dye your hair green or put on a stupid hat, it doesn’t matter. Just do what you want to do.”
Red, the main protagonist, has an alcoholic mother (Cara’s mother Pandora, a former debutante and model, struggled with addiction to prescription drugs and heroin). Other issues the characters tackle in varying degrees include self-image dilemmas, dark moods, drug-taking, a questionable suicide attempt and confused sexuality.
There are several surprising twists in the plot. When one of the group, Naomi, disappears and is found at death’s door in the Thames, with police claiming a failed suicide attempt, the weaknesses, insecurities and secrets of the other band members emerge.
Cara, too, had her fair share of challenges growing up. At 15, she suffered a bout of severe depression, the culmination of a period of anxiety and self-hatred.
She would self-harm, scratching herself until she bled, was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs, would slam herself against a tree to try to knock herself out and ended up seeing a string of therapists, she later told US Vogue.
The depression resurfaced when she was 22, but today, she says it’s not a recurring theme in her life.
“We all get down, but mental illness is something that’s very important that we all need to talk about. I’m very lucky and grateful to be able to do things that I get to do. I work very hard and I just need to make sure that I spend enough time looking after myself.
“Writing the book has certainly been the best kind of therapy I’ve ever had, for sure, because it’s there to help other people in therapy in some way. If you can talk about experiences and other people read it and enjoy it, that’s great,” she admits.
“When you bottle things up and don’t allow yourself to be emotional, when you don’t feel things, whether it came out as depression when I was 15 or as psoriasis when I was 18, I tend to bottle things up and brush things under the carpet. It’s just about learning to express those things, which is why I write music and have learned how to cry.” Music and acting have always helped her escape the more painful elements of her life, she has said. Cara’s already starred in 2016 blockbuster Suicide Squad and recent sci-fi adventure Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets.
Now sporting a brunette pixiestyle haircut, she shaved her hair to star in the forthcoming Life In A Year, in which she plays a teenage cancer patient.
“I’m living my dream, I’m living my fantasy, from when I was a kid.
“I’m doing a TV show and playing a fairy (in a series called Carnival Row, opposite Orlando Bloom) – it’s the coolest thing ever,” Cara enthuses. “I’m only 25 and I’ve already shaved my head for a role, playing a cancer patient. That is incredible, to be able to play these roles.”
Writing the book while in the midst of shooting Life In A Year was also therapeutic, she reflects.
“I found the writing process liberating.
“It was the light at the end of the tunnel.
“While in the role, I was in a very dark place. Writing the book gave me a window of light.”
The novel is peppered with Snapchat streaks, references to WhatsApp, secret Facebook forums and chat rooms, material familiar to any teenager.
“I grew up later, after the social media thing. For me, I would have alienated myself more with it,” says Cara, who has more than 40 million Instagram followers.
She also explores sexuality in the book, as the teenagers struggle to find themselves.
It’s been well documented that she has dated both men and women. She recently told Glamour magazine: “Once I spoke about my sexual fluidity, people were like, ‘So you’re gay’. And I’m like, ‘No, I’m not gay’.”
While films and books seem to be the way her career is heading, what about modelling?
“It’s something that I’ll probably not always do – I don’t know if I’m always going to look the way I look – so I don’t know,” Cara confesses.
“Modelling has been a big part of my life and it’s what I’m known for, but it’s not something that I’ve been writing about – but maybe I will one day.”