Ex-model Marie so broke ‘I may have to work in a supermarket’

SHE was one of the original supermodels and has told of her encounters with famous men including Marlon Brando, Warren Beatty and cricketer turned Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan.

Yet Marie Helvin has now admitted that she’s broke and considering applying for a job as a supermarket cashier.

‘I’m completely self-reliant, and I don’t know what I am going to do, because during the pandemic period, I’ve used up most of my savings now and I’m seriously thinking about going home,’ says Helvin, 69, who grew up in Hawaii.

Helvin, who introduced Princess Diana to Dodi Fayed at an Aids Trust ball at Cliveden in 1989, lives in London, but believes ageism isn’t a factor in the U.S. Pacific Ocean state.

‘They have less stigma about age with getting jobs,’ she explains. ‘You can get a job at Whole Foods [supermarket chain] in your 80s in America. Put it this way, I wouldn’t apply to work in Whole Foods here. But back home in Hawaii, if I needed to, I’d go there and work.’

When she divorced photographer David Bailey in 1985, Helvin walked away with a divorce settlement of £100,000. Having remained unmarried since then, she admits she could benefit from some financial support. ‘What would be nice would be to have help as I get older, to be able to share the expenses of getting older,’ she says. After her divorce, she enjoyed a four-year relationship with the Duchess of Cornwall’s conservationist brother, Mark Shand, who died after an accident in 2014 aged 62. Helvin blames herself for the demise of their romance. ‘Mark was the sweetest, kindest, most loving person,’ she says. ‘I was so stupid and foolish and I didn’t realise that at the time, as you rarely do.’ Helvin confesses for the first time that her youthful good looks are not entirely natural. ‘I do have Botox twice a year, just enough so that I don’t look sad,’ she reveals on the Third Act podcast. She hopes she might yet find romance. ‘If I am ever lucky enough to meet someone, then I’d hope that he might be older and divorced or widowed, I mean, I don’t want to go out with some young kid.’ Well, her old friend Jerry Hall’s husband, Rupert Murdoch, is back on the singles market…