How I went from drug addiction to modelling lingerie, by Ewan’s girl
‘Anxiety is suffocating’
POSING in risque lingerie, Ewan McGregor’s daughter Clara exudes glamour and confidence.
But the 25-year-old has admitted she would never have been able to model without therapy.
Miss McGregor spoke candidly about her mental health and addiction to the tranquilliser Xanax four years ago as she was announced as the new face of British lingerie brand Bluebella.
She revealed she had suffered from chronic anxiety since the age of four and said the drug was prescribed to ease panic attacks. However, she became dependant on them and her family and film producer partner Jimmy Giannopoulos were forced to intervene. The model said: ‘Around four years ago my family and my partner Jimmy spotted that things were getting out of hand, they said, “You’re just not yourself any more.”
‘When I was on Xanax I had no energy, and I would start forgetting things. That’s the scary thing, I would forget whole chunks of days.
‘It was incredibly hard for me to get off them, but I didn’t want to be in that space any more and would never consider tak- ing one again.’ She said years of therapy have helped her deal with a lifetime of mental health issues, adding: ‘I simply couldn’t have done this [modelling] campaign before... anxiety is suffocating and you just end up limiting yourself, it makes your life a lot smaller.
‘I’m 25 now and I’ve spent a lot of time working on it with therapy, but it’s only in the last three to four years that I feel less constricted by it. My sister Esther and my mum are a great help.’ Her Hollywood star father, 50, has also struggled with addiction and stopped drinking alcohol in 2000.
The pair are working on a film about a father who takes his drug-addicted daughter to rehab. Miss McGregor said the film is ‘very loosely inspired off of our relationship’. She also revealed she had an abortion while she was trapped in a ‘toxic’ relationship and battling her addiction about four years ago.
Her sister Esther is McGregor’s eldest daughter with his former wife Eve Mavrakis. They separated in 2017 after 22 years of marriage.
After the split, Esther wrote online that she was keeping her mother away from ‘a ****** men’ – but later insisted she wasn’t referring specifically to her father.