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RETURN OF AN 80s ICON
Eighties icon Kelly LeBrock tells how the dark side of Tinseltown made her flee to the country – and why she’s back with a new reality show
Kelly LeBrock, who shot to fame as The Woman In Red, on why she turned her back on Hollywood – and her new modelling reality show
Catapulted to stardom by a red dress, Kelly LeBrock played Gene Wilder’s fantasy woman in her debut film The Woman In Red in 1984. The billboard posters of her with the dress billowing Marilyn Monroe-style around her legs were so alluring they had to be taken down in case they distracted drivers.
Kelly, who grew up in London’s Knightsbridge, had been a model since she was spotted at a party aged 15, gracing every cover from Vogue to Vanity Fair. She dated Jack Nicholson (‘he was all right’) and Rod Stewart, who two-timed her with model Kelly Emberg (when LeBrock found out, she threw a party at Rod’s Malibu home that wrecked the place). At 22 she also dated Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, ‘who was a sweetheart but such a mess – we both were. We went over to his house and told his wife Jo we were getting married,’ says Kelly. ‘That’s pretty messed up. Sorry, Jo!’
After a two-year marriage to producer Victor Drai she met and married movie action hero Steven Seagal. When they divorced in 1996 she vanished from Hollywood as quickly as she’d appeared, heading off to raise her three children at a remote ranch in California, where she lives with her horses, pigs and dog Cookie. ‘There are mountain lions – one ate four of my goats,’ she tells me. ‘There are also black bears and rattlesnakes. But I’m not afraid. You know where you stand with animals. You don’t in the city with people. It’s not as trustworthy.’
Kelly has good reason not to trust. With Hollywood imploding under the weight of sexual assault claims in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and with the modelling world also beset with allegations of abuse, she knows all too well the dangers in both professions. As a teen model she says she was assaulted ‘a number of times’ and endured numerous instances of ‘the old casting couch routine. When I started modelling, I was just a deer in the headlights.’ Kelly’s combination of stunning looks – those full lips – and naivety (‘as a child I wanted to be a nun’) led to dangerous encounters. ‘My first modelling trip was a calendar shoot and the photographer had to get a letter from my parents because I was underage. During the shoot his swimming trunks were loose. He was in his 70s – it was disgusting.’ She also says she’s been taken advantage of. ‘People put things in your drinks and afterwards you don’t know anything. When I told somebody a certain person had done this to me, she looked at me and laughed and said, “Oh, he does that to everybody.”’ It’s called Hollyweird for a reason.’
Not surprising then she was deter- mined to move out of Hollywood to raise her children by Seagal – Annaliza, 30, Dominic, 27, and Arissa, 24. ‘I didn’t want them to be involved in all that nonsense,’ she says. ‘They grew up without a TV in the house. So it’s kind of ironic we’re now doing this.’
She’s referring to her new project Growing Up Supermodel, a reality show featuring seven children of famous parents trying to make it as models, including Arissa. It follows the youngsters as they try to get on in the industry using their parents’ names as a calling card, and shines a light on the difficulties of having famous parents. As Arissa says, ‘People tell me I’m Kelly LeBrock’s daughter or Steven Seagal’s daughter, but I’m just me.’ And with most of the children coming from broken homes, it also reveals how the pain of divorce afflicts the aspiring models.
Kelly comes across as the voice of reason. ‘When people ask what’s different about modelling now to when I was doing it, I say we had our own hair, our own lips and our own t**s. I think UK audiences will enjoy watching how American society puts so much value on how we look. Reality TV seems phoney to me, but this is real.’
Now 57, Kelly is brimming with health. Born in New York, she was five when her family moved to London. Her father Harold owned two art galleries and at one point had a Douglas DC-9 airliner, complete with king-size bed and chandelier. Her mother, Mary Cecilia Traynor, had been a successful model. ‘But she’d gone through some awful things too,’ says Kelly. ‘I only learnt about it when she was dying.’ Her mother suffered from dementia and died in 2009.
Kelly’s mother’s parents fought fiercely with one another, and seem to have passed that on to Mary Cecilia. ‘She was vicious. She’d hit me with a wooden spoon... when she could catch me,’ says Kelly. ‘My brother was diagnosed with Asperger’s and my mother couldn’t cope. Then she got duodenal ulcers and I think the pain, plus Daddy losing money as he did, drove her insane. By eight, me and my brother, who was four then, would wake up before them and go for a smoke. Mummy even used to pack cigarettes in my brother’s lunchbox saying, “Darling, I know what it’s like to run out”.’
She moved to New York as a teenager where she married Drai in 1984. The year after their divorce she was introduced to Seagal. ‘I’d never met anyone like him,’ she says. ‘He did acupuncture and chiropractics, he could draw, play guitar, write songs. He was 6ft 4in and strong as anything: if you lay on his chest you’d need a pillow it was so hard.’
They married in 1987 but by the time they starred in the 1990 film Hard To Kill together, rumours of his infidelity abounded. The final straw came when he had an affair with Kelly’s friend Arissa Wolf – after whom Kelly named her daughter. ‘I was done by then, she could have him,’ she says.
After Seagal Kelly dated Roger Moore’s son Geoffrey – ‘He was way too nice for me’ – before marrying retired investment banker Fred Steck. ‘We were together ten years, but when my mum and my brother started dying [ Harold died of cancer in the same year as his mother] that made me realise things weren’t right with my life.’
Now she’s keen to keep working. ‘I think it’s important women my age are allowed to age gracefully... though not too gracefully. I’ve always defined myself through being a mother, a wife, so now I do what I want. I feel sexier than I did before. People may not think I look sexier, but it’s not about how you look – it’s about how you feel inside.’
‘When I started modelling I was a deer in the headlights’