Mick Jagger seduced me when I was 15
By her own admission, Rae Dawn was no innocent and Jagger never knew her age. But how will the actress’s startling revelation go down in the era of #MeToo?
AS SHE opened the front door, she instantly recognised the swaggering figure before her with his tousled hair and ‘rock star grin’. ‘You’re cute,’ said legendary Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger – to which she cheekily replied: ‘You’re cuter.’ It was the moment the 33-year-old rock idol met 15-year-old budding actress Rae Dawn Chong, who last night sensationally revealed that she and Sir Mick had a two-day fling in 1977 while he was still married to first wife Bianca.
Rae Dawn, best-known for her role in the 1985 action film Commando, met the womanising rocker during a trip to New York. After their brief introduction, he whisked her to a recording studio before the pair spent the night together.
In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday last night, Rae Dawn, now a thrice-divorced, 58-year-old grandmother, said: ‘He never asked me how old I was and I never told him. It never came up. I remember thinking he was really cute. He had tousled hair. I thought, “Oh man, he is beautiful.”
‘He said, “What are you doing right now?” I said, “Nothing really.”
‘He grabbed my hand and we jumped in his limo and went straight to a recording studio. The Stones were there, I was in the background. I remember being in there for hours and hours.
‘Then I slept over at his apartment. I knew what I was doing. I was experimenting with Mick. I was having fun.’
Rae Dawn, who says Jagger did not know her age, recalls waking to find Jagger’s bandmate Keith Richards staring at the pair. But that didn’t deter them from spending another day together – first back at the recording studio and then at a Fleetwood Mac concert at Madison Square Garden, where Jagger and Richards were mobbed by fans.
Sitting down with The Mail on Sunday last night in a hotel overlooking the bright light’s of LA’s infamous Sunset Strip, the B-list actress insisted Jagger should not be vilified because their fling took place ‘in a different era’ to today’s #MeToo culture.
She says she is only speaking out to ‘own’ the story after accidentally blurting out during a podcast that she had sex with Jagger when she was two years under the age of consent. The podcast is due to air today.
Speaking on tape to showbiz ‘bible’ The Hollywood Reporter, she was asked how she landed the Commando role: ‘I got it because I’d been in a Jagger video and then they asked me how I knew Mick and before I knew it I’d blurted out that I’d had sex with him when I was 15. It just slipped out.
‘I feel incredibly bad about it. It’s me and my big mouth. My family and friends knew about it but it’s not something I have ever dined out on.’ Last night, Sir Mick declined to comment.
Feisty and, at times, embarrassingly honest about why she chose to have underage sex with a rock icon, Rae Dawn insists that the fling was consensual.
For our interview she is dressed demurely in an understated black dress with an elegant double-string of pearls around her neck – but she freely admits to having a wild past. She says that her own family will be ‘disgusted’ by her decision to go public and believes Jagger himself will be angry and devastated: ‘He’s probably going to lose his s*** because I was a minor. He’s going to be so mad at me.’
Rae Dawn brings with her a black leather journal from 1977 in which she recorded her liaison with Jagger in childish handwriting which reads: ‘I got to experience being a groupie. Not that being a groupie is worth experiencing. I just had to go and be wild. Well I did it. I got to live with Mick Jagger, John Phillips, Mackenzie and Ron Wood… it was fun and full of excitement.’
John Phillips was the singer in The Mamas & the Papas and Mackenzie his daughter, and Rae Dawn’s best friend. It was at their home that she met Jagger. Ron
Wood is, of course, Jagger’s Rolling Stones bandmate Ronnie Wood.
In her journal, Rae Dawn lists in green ink Jagger’s phone numbers and home address, along with numbers of other men she was acquainted with, including comedian Steve Martin and Hollywood actor Ryan O’Neal.
Born in 1959 in Canada, Rae Dawn is the daughter of Tommy Chong, an American comedian dubbed the Pope of Pot.
He and his comedy partner Richard ‘Cheech’ Marin made millions in the 1970s and 1980s from films about marijuana counterculture, known as ‘stoner movies’.
Rae Dawn was the result of a onenight stand between Chong and a Canadian woman called Abigail. She describes herself as a ‘free range’ child whose parents were constantly working. She had travelled to New York to try to get discovered as a model when Jagger turned up on the doorstep.
‘Mick was very beautiful, very shy, very self-absorbed,’ she recalls. ‘He had great lips, he was a great kisser. He wasn’t that much older than me in my brain. He was 33 and young and gorgeous with a nice body. It wasn’t a bad thing, it was fabulous. Totally rock ’n’ roll. He didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do, but he was very vain, always looking in the mirror.’
The age of consent at the time was 17, but Sir Mick cannot face criminal charges as the statute of limitations for reporting seconddegree rape is 20 years – not that Rae Dawn would ever want him to be prosecuted.
‘He did nothing wrong,’ she said. ‘It was the 1970s, a different era. I wasn’t a victim.
‘I don’t want him to get into trouble about this. It wasn’t traumatising. I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t an innocent schoolgirl. I always acted a lot older than I was. I was a grown-up at 15.’
Months before meeting Jagger, Rae Dawn had lost her virginity to a boy her own age, and had many sexual encounters before him. She also admits to smoking marijuana since she was 12 and moving out of her family home soon after her 15th birthday to live with a dealer.
‘At 15, I was definitely a Lolita,’ she said. ‘I knew I had the power to pick and chose whatever man I wanted. I was keen to have every experience I could. Mick was part of that.’
After their New York fling, Rae Dawn bumped into Jagger again at a party in 1979 and he again invited her to his house.
Six years later, they met again at New York’s Mayflower Hotel where she asked if she could be in his next video. He obliged and he cast her as his on-screen lover in the video for his song Just Another Night, released that year.
She also starred in his movie Running Out Of Luck, which was filmed in Brazil. Overnight, she became a sex symbol and Hollywood producers began seeking her out.
In her interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s What Happened In Hollywood podcast, she describes herself as being ‘young, underage and jailbait’ at the time they met.
‘I will tell you that it didn’t traumatise me, it wasn’t a #MeToo moment, it was something that empowered me, too,’ she says.
‘I could have said no, I wasn’t forced. I thought he was adorable and I was just new at the whole thing [sex] and he grabbed me and said “you’re it”. I wanted to be it.’
Rae Dawn, who has one son and two grandchildren, was a ‘hippy dippy’ flower child when she met Jagger. The pop star is now in a long-term relationship with ballerina Melanie Hamrick.
Rae Dawn admits that Jagger treated her well and became a friend. She also got to know Jagger’s second wife, Texan model Jerry Hall, who started dating the rock star later in 1977, leading to the breakdown of his first marriage.
‘Jerry wasn’t jealous. Mick and I were done by then. We hung out as friends. He talked about his kids all the time. He was concerned and proud of them – I was impressed what a good dad he is. He might be a s*** boyfriend but he’s a lovely father.’
Their friendship only ended after Rae Dawn said in an interview that he had kissed her in a ‘licky’ way in the Just Another Night video.
‘In real life he was a great kisser but in the film he did lots of “licky” things,’ she said. ‘I talked about that in an interview. He has a fragile ego. He hasn’t spoken to me since.
‘I saw him a party at Greta Garbo’s former home and I could sense he wasn’t going to speak to me.
‘It’s all about currency in Hollywood. Between men and women it’s “what can you do for me?” When you’re young and hot, everyone wants a piece.
‘When you are old and crusty, nobody wants a piece.
‘I’m not defined by what happened to me with Mick Jagger. I’m not upset by it either.
‘I guess that’s the point I’m trying to make. Sex has become a dirty subject. It’s not. Sex is fun.’
She says she expects this article to cause a ‘s***storm’ and anticipates hate mail from Jagger fans and women who support the #MeToo movement who might consider her a sell-out. As she rises to leave, she says: ‘This is my story. I can only tell it as I see it. This is my truth. Yes, I was only 15. But it was my body, my choice, my decision.’
It was not a bad thing. It was totally rock ’n’ roll. But he was very vain