British supermodel Kate Moss opened up about some of the pitfalls of her modeling career in a rare interview for the BBC podcast series Desert Island Discs.
According to Moss, the iconic shoots that helped define her career were often “challenging and painful” behind the scenes. For example, while filming Calvin Klein’s original 1992 lingerie campaign featuring her and Mark Wahlberg, Moss told Laverne that she felt “vulnerable and intimidated.”
“(Wahlberg) was very macho and it was all about him, he had a big entourage,” Moss said. “They played on my vulnerability,” she added of those in leadership positions in the industry. “I was very young and innocent.”
And Moss, who was scouted by a top modeling agent at 14 and started doing editorials at 16, also spoke of other times her youth was used against her. She said photographers “pressed her” to show more skin than she was comfortable with, including being topless.
As the face of the infamous “heroin chic” ’90s fashion trend, Moss said she was often “the scapegoat for a lot of people’s problems.”
“I never had anorexia, I never had… I never took heroin,” she said. “I was skinny because I wasn’t fed on set or on screenings, and I’ve always been skinny.”
So, in 2005, when a British tabloid published pictures of Moss apparently taking cocaine, Moss told Laverne that she “felt bad and was very angry.”
Kate Moss as Stella McCartney in 1997. Credits: THOMAS COEKS/AFP/AFP via Getty Images
Moss later released a statement in which she apologized “to all the people I let down because of my behavior, which reflected badly on my family, friends, colleagues, business partners and others.”
“I take full responsibility for my actions,” she said in a statement. “I also recognize that there are various personal issues that I need to address and have begun to take the difficult but necessary steps to resolve them.”
Moss was never charged.
Vigorously defending controversial figures such as Galliano, who was found guilty in 2011 of making anti-Semitic remarks in a Parisian cafe, Moss declared her belief in “fairness and fairness.”
“I know that John Galliano is not a bad person,” she said. “People are crazy when they drink and say things they would never say if they were sober.”
