Paradis: thanks, haters

Vanessa Paradis has been famous for most of her life, says Chrissy Iley in The Sunday Times. At 14 she had a worldwide hit with the song Joe le taxi; three years later she won a César (the French equivalent of an Oscar) for her role in the film Noce Blanche. Her boyfriends have included Lenny Kravitz and a string of French creative luminaries, and she had a 14-year relationship with Johnny Depp, with whom she had two children. But she paid a heavy price for her early success – as a teenager she was shouted at and even punched in the street, and had the words “Vanessa is a whore” sprayed outside her house. “I was overexposed on radio, on TV. I was everywhere. People couldn’t digest me.” At 46, however, she believes that the harassment worked to her advantage. “It was tough because it became an everyday thing. And I have to say I thank them for doing it. It helped me not to be full of myself, being told I was crap every day: it helped me concentrate on the essentials.” A former Arsenal player with 140 England caps, Alex Scott had an extraordinary football career. Now, she has crashed through a glass ceiling to become the first female pundit on Sky Sports. She knows some fans think she should (as they put it) “get back in the kitchen”, but Scott, 34, hopes she will help change perceptions of women’s football, for the sake of future generations. When she started her career, women players were paid so little that she had to work in the laundry, washing the men’s shirts, just to get by. “Ian Wright was one of my biggest heroes, and now I sit alongside him on TV – but I used to be in the Arsenal, washing his kit,” she told Madison Marriage in the FT. Growing up on a London estate, she always dreamt of greater things. Her break came when she was eight. During a youth tournament her brother was competing in, she was asked to stand in for a missing player and so impressed the referee, he recommended her to Arsenal. Her gender wasn’t the only obstacle she faced: owing to hearing problems, she had to have years of speech therapy and still sometimes stumbles over her words. But she didn’t let that stop her when the BBC asked her to comment on the men’s World Cup this year. “One of my favourite quotes is from Billie Jean King: ‘Pressure is a privilege.’ Because it is. You can sink or swim; just use it and think: this is my moment.”