The strange life of the “hot felon”

Jeremy Meeks occupies an unusual place in the celebrity pantheon, says Helena de Bertodano in The Times – the ex-gangster is famous for looking good while being bad. In 2014, he was arrested in California on weapons charges – and his brooding police mugshot went viral. Dubbed “the hot felon” by the media, he got an agent while in jail and on his release in 2016, became a catwalk model. At a party in Cannes the next year, he met Chloe Green – daughter of Philip Green – and joined the billionaire set. Now, he is bringing up a child with Chloe in a world that could hardly be more different to his own. Meeks’ parents were heroin addicts. When he was a baby, his father was given a 45-year term for murder. While still in his teens, he fell into California’s gang culture, and joined the notorious Crips. He was shot five times aged 15, and spent ten of the next 15 years in jail. Even then, people noticed his looks. “They’d say, ‘You should be a model.’ But it didn’t make sense to me,” he says. “Like, ‘Look around. We are in the gutter. How could I be a model?’ We couldn’t pay our rent; we had to steal food just to eat.” By 2014, he had married a nurse, and had a son. He was trying to go straight when he was arrested again. In the mugshot, he looks tough, but there’s a hint of emotion. “I was just thinking about what my son’s reaction was going to be when he finds out that I’m locked up. I was thinking, I’m not going to be able to pick him up from school.”