Former supermodel Cara Delevingne is just 24 years old, but her resumé is already impressive, and she has a number of feathers in her talent cap. And the British star seems to be done with her first love, the career that catapulted her to international stardom – modelling. She is now training her sights on acting and is also looking to pen a novel.
At just 20-years-old, she got signed on to Storm Models, a talent agency that has the likes of Kate Moss, Jourdan Dunn, Cindy Crawford, Behati Prinsloo and Carla Bruni, among others. Soon after, she was walking the biggest runways, for fashion houses, including Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry, Chanel – you name it and she’s walked it – and she also became the face of a number of brands, including Mango, alongside top model Kate Moss, with whom the media drew comparisons for their similar personalities.
You would think she was living the life, jet-setting across the globe and being an intricate part of the famous Swift Squad, with fellow supermodels Karlie Kloss, Gigi and Bella Hadid. But Cara Delevigne says it was not as it always appeared. In an interview with the New York Times, she had dropped a bomb, saying: “Modelling was never a dream of mine” and that being in that highly demanding atmosphere was “killing my soul”. And in a later sit-down with Esquire magazine, she spoke about her battle with depression while she was still in her teens. “I was suicidal. I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I realized how lucky and privileged I was, but all I wanted to do was die. I felt so guilty because of that and hated myself because of that, and then it’s a cycle. I didn’t want to exist anymore. I wanted for each molecule of my body to disintegrate. I wanted to die.”
After years in the glamour industry, she finally cut ties with Storm Models, and has successfully completed two movies. Her debut was the role of a novel character, Margo in Paper Planes. Then, she acted in the film adaptation of the anti-hero multi-starrer, Suicide Squad, playing the role of Enchantress. We will next be seeing Cara Delevingne in the upcoming sci-fi action flick, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. She shared with Time magazine about the role, and dismissed rumors that she was just working in films to “pad” her resumé. “I take what roles I do very seriously. I always want to portray a strong female. Acting roles for women are usually less strong, and like, bleeding hearts.”
And what is she doing with her time off? She is a multi-talented young woman, being passionate about drums and guitar, and evening performing for a Chanel short film with Pharrell Williams. And her next venture is going to be a novel called Mirror, Mirror which will be published in October this year. She says the story is a “twisty coming-of-age” tale about four teenage girls and says that turning to writing has been “life-changing and something I hold really close to my heart”.
