EVERYTHING IS JUST ROSIE!
Since joining forces with M&S five years ago supermodel Rosie HuntingtonWhiteley has helped the retailer sell 11 million pieces from her lingerie and nightwear range
POse: Rosie’s underwear range is M&s’s best-selling line in its 133-year history. Inset, with film star fiancé Jason statham and in Transformers with shia LaBeouf nowhere. It was my parents’ dream to have some animals and have an organic farm, and so that’s how we grew up. Very sheltered.”
Her mother, Fiona, is a fitness instructor while her father, Charles, is a surveyor and she has two younger siblings.
In the past Rosie has revealed she was bullied at school because of her double-barrelled name, full lips and flat chest. It wasn’t all gloom, however, as classmates in Tavistock once voted her “most likely to become a supermodel”.
Rosie also admits: “I was never particularly fashionable. Devon didn’t allow for those opportunities.” Her first foray into fashion was buying a fake pair of Ugg boots online, and she recalls the first time she wore them. “I walked into a restaurant and literally everyone turned and looked at me and they all laughed,” she says.
It’s certainly Rosie who’s having the last laugh now. She was 15 when she interned at a modelling agency, before sitting her GCSEs, and started full-time work a year later – still wearing braces on her teeth. Her first shoot was for Levi Strauss, in 2003.
Her breakthrough year was 2008, when she was chosen to model Burberry clothes and also got her first British Vogue cover.
Along with Cara Delevingne, Kate Moss and Gandy, she’s currently one of Britain’s top earning models with an estimated fortune of more than £8million. Celebrity make-up artist Ruby Hammer, who has worked with Rosie many times, describes her as “the quintessential English rose”. Revealing another string to her bow she’s also appeared in Hollywood films, including Mad Max: Fury Road and 2011’s Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. But according to Forbes most of her earnings come from modelling, and the message from the film critics seems to be: “Don’t give up the day job.” One reviewer dismissed her as “window dressing” in Transformers while another wrote that she “sucked the life from every scene”. She has been with Statham, who is 20 years her senior, since 2010 and it was confirmed last year they were engaged. He’s also a Brit and known for his roles in films such as Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and The Expendables series. Before meeting Rosie he dated Kelly Brook for seven years, while she’s said to have had a fling with Kylie Minogue’s ex Olivier Martinez.
JASON and Rosie have a baby son, Jack, who was born in June and Rosie announced his birth on social media, declaring: “Our little man has arrived.”
The family home is a luxurious pad in Los Angeles, reportedly worth £8.5million but Rosie is still drawn to Devon. She says: “I’ll get down there and have a few days in the mud and rain and see the animals, go for a few walks. It’s good, it reminds me where I come from, then you go back to the world.
“Deep down I feel much more comfortable in my welly boots with my Mum up a field than I do at some fancy red carpet event in Hollywood.”
Her likeability is another reason why M&S, due to publish its latest results next week, pays her so richly to model its underwear. Recently she’s become more involved in the design side for her Rosie for Autograph collection. “Not only is she beautiful,” says Soozie Jenkinson, M&S head of design for lingerie. “But there is also something very grounded about her that resonates with our customers.”
It’s a description that pleases the model, who takes pride in being professional and remembering her roots. Rosie says: “To be a successful model, you have to be a team player and trouper. Your reputation is everything in the entertainment industry, and everyone talks.
“I love this saying, ‘It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a single act to destroy it’. You’re lucky if you get an opportunity, and if you do you’ve got to make the best out of it. You’ve got to show up and work hard.”
The catwalk is often associated with diva-like tantrums and demands, so it’s heartening to hear the supermodel who grew up on a farm is still prepared to muck in.