Model Behaviour

She s late, she s late for a very important date/ I ll wait, I ll wait even if she s late/La, la, la la, la,la she s late, she s late, she s late/Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm . . .
It s shortly after midday on a bright and reassuringly springy Friday afternoon and your Hot Press correspondent is sitting by the window in the Idle Wilde Cafi in Dalkey, nursing a double espresso, humming nervously, and anxiously awaiting the arrival of one Christy Turlington world famous supermodel, tireless charity worker, occasional mountaineer, firm friend of U2 and all round American icon.
Actually, anxiously isn t really the word. Every atom of my body is alive with anticipation. I ve already spoken to her on the phone and fallen completely in love with her voice and, indeed, her mind (which kind of balances things out because I ve been madly in lust with her body ever since Calvin Klein began running those beach ads). And call me optimistic, but I m wearing brand new silk boxer shorts (#25).
Today s planned meeting came as a direct result of a telephone interview we did a fortnight ago me in Dublin, her in New York to promote her involvement in the Brown Thomas International Fashion Show in The Point later tonight. We d discovered a few common people and interests during the course of our conversation (mainly because I d exaggerated, namedropped and, on at least one occasion, downright lied to the best of my abilities throughout) and I d suggested that maybe we should get together and talk further when she came over to Dublin. She agreed, my heart skipped several beats and, shortly afterwards, the price of Eircom shares went up.
Lots of telephone conversations ensued. My people spoke to her people, her people spoke to my people, the Brown Thomas people spoke to her people, my people spoke to the Brown Thomas people, the Brown Thomas people spoke to the Chernobyl people, the Chernobyl people spoke to her people . . . and so on. Eventually everybody s people were all agreed on a time and a place for our date (I refused to call it an interview); namely here in the Idle Wilde Cafe about fifteen minutes ago. There s still no sign of her. I m a little worried but not too much. She s a supermodel, after all, and is hardly not going to be fashionably late. Super-late, even.
I m also dying for a cigarette but she s a fervent anti-smoking campaigner so I m abstaining for the moment. To be caught puffing on a Benson when (if!!) she arrives would be as big a faux pas as ordering a rare and bloody steak at a dinner with a vegetarian. So I sit and I fidget and I wait. And I wait. Time drags. After twenty minutes I m really getting nervous. Where is she? Could she have forgotten? I call Hot Press for reassurance. She s a supermodel, for fuck s sake, Liam Mackey laughs down the line. Sit tight, she s bound to be late. Worry after forty minutes.
Twenty-five minutes later she still hasn t arrived and I m beginning to contemplate the dire consequences of being stood up. They really don t bear thinking about. It s not exactly like I ve been discreet about the whole thing. I mean, come on I had a date (no, I insist) with one of the most beautiful women in the world. Wouldn t you tell someone? Wouldn t you tell everyone? If I could ve afforded it, I would ve taken out a full page ad in the national press. I couldn t so I d gone for word of mouth instead.
Did I happen to mention that I m meeting up with Christy Turlington on Friday? I d slip into casual conversations. Em, you did, yes, several times, people would reply, now did you come into this shop to actually buy something?
Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck!!! I m facing serious ridicule and a whole battery farm s worth of egg on my face if she doesn t arrive. I try not to think about it. I think about it anyway. I order more coffee and fret like I ve never fretted before. I ve never been this nervous in my life (well, maybe once or twice at Customs but this is a different kind of nervousness). Suddenly, my mobile rings. There s an anal American male voice at the other end of the line. Yeah, I m looking for Or-Lorph Thorrenson, he intones and I hate him immediately.
That s me, I reply.
Yeah, this is Steve from Christy Turlington s agency in New York.
Oh right, do you know where she is? I squawk, suddenly paying serious attention. I m waiting for her at the moment.
Christy won t be coming to meet you, he says, coldly. My world collapses.
Em . . . why not? I ask, after a moment s silence.
Well, we did a little background research on you and discovered that you re some, like, pro-drugs guy. Christy Turlington doesn t want anything to do with people like you.
I m stunned. Now hang on a minute . . . I stammer. I campaigned for cannabis legalisation, that s all! It s a social issue . . . I stood for election over here . . . there s no reason why . . .
There s every reason why! Steve interjects sharply. Why would Christy want to meet scum like you?
Now, I m furious. How dare you! I seethe. That s completely offensive!! I m a serious journalist!!! I ve interviewed lots of . . .
You re just some druggy hairball! Steve cuts in again, in his intensely annoying Noo-Yawk accent. Christy hates people like you!! The interview is cancelled!
By now, I m apocalyptic with rage, so angry I can barely get the words out: Now listen to me, you fucking arsehole . . .
Steve wankstain that he is starts to guffaw uproariously down the phone. In the background I can hear several other people laughing. Olaf it s Liam Mackey!! Has she not shown up yet?
In retrospect, my first wind-up of the new millennium was perfectly timed. Suddenly I m more amused than nervous. I m still chuckling to myself minutes later when the limo pulls up outside and the glamorous Ms. Turlington finally makes her appearance. She s casually dressed in simple jeans, sweater and sneakers, she s sorry she s late, she graciously accepts my gift of a poetry book (mine, as it happens amazingly, I d found a copy in a Dalkey secondhand bookshop just an hour beforehand), she jokingly asks if I ve hidden my cigarettes, she orders a coffee, she chats about Bono s new baby son, she smiles the second most beautiful smile I ve ever seen in my life.
Even better, she s the real thing. She s stunningly attractive. But then, I and you already knew that . . .

OLAF TYARANSEN: Are you looking forward to the show in The Point tonight?
CHRISTY TURLINGTON: Yeah, I am! Generally, the fashion show thing is a bit jaded. You often do about ten shows a day. People are looking at clothes all day and there are a lot of clothes that are ugly! The ones you see on the television are the ones that are interesting. But there are a lot of things, in between, that are pretty bad. So you re used to people buyers and stuff that are just sitting there writing down notes and everybody s pretty bored. So when you come to do a show like this one here they re a lot more receptive. People can actually get a lot more excited and it s a lot more fun for us.
Do you see modelling as a sort of art? You know, are you performing like a rock star when you walk out?
No, there s no performance aspect. Not for me. There is for some people. Naomi is definitely a performer in that way. But for me, it was always a matter of getting on and getting off as quickly as possible. I don t know in my job I prefer more intimate kind of situations. Less people. People that I know. People that I m comfortable with. That s why I retired from the catwalk. That kind of larger group vibe is hard, especially because there s a lot of negativity and a lot of, like, boredom.
And a lot of sleaze as well, apparently. Did you see the recent documentary that exposed the Elite Agency?
No, I m dying to see it. They apparently banned it. There was something that was illegal in what they did so it never made it to the television in the States.
Well, it was full of ugly rich guys pushing cocaine and manipulating beautiful young girls into fucking them to help further their careers. Is that an accurate picture?
All that is true. It s definitely true.
Did it ever happen to you?
I never had any kind of weird situation. Luckily, those agent types never really bothered me. But that definitely does exist. It s a big shame. But it s something nobody ever really talks about. It s all kind of accepted. But it s an industry where there s no union for models. Some people were trying to start one a few years ago, but at the time I was already not working that much, so it was a hard thing for me to enforce. It would have taken a lot of work to get it off the ground.
Would it be something you d do now?
I don t know. On one level it would probably be a good thing for me to do, in the sense that something goes on and you d help change it. But on another level, I feel like I want to make a distance from that world and that job. I don t know. I ve thought about maybe doing a documentary or something about it. One girl that I d met when she was about 18, she ended up being a really strung out junkie and a crackhead, basically. I had heard stories about her being in these places up in Harlem and she was still incredibly beautiful, but just being in really decrepit places and having sex for drugs really bad. And when I d met her she was such a clean-cut American girl and she was working and successful. I don t know what happened. I just think that modelling is a very dangerous job and not only for the reasons of, like, selling clothes and being sexual. Like, you re in a position at a very young age to make a lot of money and you know it s a weird thing to make that kind of money when you re . . . (pauses)
You re too young to handle it?
Yeah! And so I think people if they have a tendency are going to start to do drugs and drink because you almost feel like you don t deserve that much money.
Did you get into drugs when you were a younger model?
I kind of bypassed it. I must say, probably when I stopped doing the shows, there was a kind of resurgence of it. I m sure there s always been a certain amount around but when I was young, up until about five or six years ago, I never saw anyone ever do drugs, including those kind of creepy agents that that documentary is about.
Did you drink?
A little bit. Definitely alcohol was around, but you know, in those European countries, people are drinking wine for lunch and things and if you re 16 or 17 years old nobody is your parent, so nobody s going to tell you you can t do that! Even, for example, cigarettes for me. I smoked before I was a model, but I wasn t allowed to smoke. But when I was in the industry no-one was there to tell me not to, so I could openly smoke and drink coffee. So I thought I was quite grown up.
You must have experienced drugs at some stage.
I did a little drug experimentation before I was a model too as a teenager (laughs). In San Francisco, like a lot of people. But not in a bad way. It didn t seem like such a novelty when I was around people who could if they wanted to. I ve never been that interested in them. Cigarettes are my addiction problem.
Are you still campaigning against tobacco smoking with Al Gore?
I became a kind of spokesperson for the American Cancer Society though I m not anymore but I did this Public Service Announcement after my dad died. And I did a few more. I co-produced a few with MTV for a younger audience. But Gore asked me to come down to Washington to do an anti-glamorisation of smoking thing. Because his thing was like, in movies and things, sometimes people smoke for no reason. It doesn t actually drive the character, it just becomes an easy acting choice. And he s just saying people should take a little bit more responsibility. Because young people do look at that stuff. We re not really allowed to be photographed smoking in a fashion spread. Actors can for some reason, but when you re selling the clothes you re not allowed to. But in the party pages usually you see people smoking. I thought that was a bad thing for magazines to be doing. My father died of lung cancer. Al Gore s sister died of lung cancer too.
I dunno. I have a bit of a problem with Al Gore personally.
I know. But that was really the main issue. I do other things for environmental causes too and for a while he was quite a good environmental activist. And for those two issues alone as a vice-president he was important for me, for things I was working on. But I don t think I ll be voting for him (laughs).
Going back to the drug thing, do models take coke for stamina?
I don t think that s the reason why people start it. That s sort of a side effect of it.
Or to lose weight?
That s another issue pressure on people to lose weight. I was never told that and I ve never been the thinnest of supermodels. But some of the younger ones that does end up being a common excuse when somebody thinks that somebody can t model or won t do very well. Their agents tell them see if you can lose some extra weight and come back. So that starts that whole cycle but, as far as things like anorexia are concerned, I ve never seen any anorexic models.
Isn t that one of those things that everybody thinks they know that there s a lot of anorexia in modelling.
It s one of those misconceptions. A while ago there were people saying things about Kate Moss. There were some posters around New York with Freak written on them. She s not that skinny, she s just thin. She was just a girl. She was seventeen years old at the time. I think it was just the way she was photographed. She s never been an emaciated, skinny person. There is a difference between a real anorexic person and a skinny person. Even the skinniest model there s a few really skinny ones they re just freaks of nature, I think. They ve got no breasts and they ve got no hips, and that s just the way they are. They re not anorexic.
But don t you have to watch your diet fairly carefully?
People assume you re a model, you re skinny, and therefore you starve yourself. There s a lot of models and they eat crap or they eat really badly. There s this really beautiful girl at the moment called Giselle and she s all over the place in America. She s incredible looking and she eats this MacDonald s diet every day. That s what Kate eats too. And I ve seen Naomi put food away like you can t imagine! She must have freaky genes. I don t know what it is.
Is there much competition between models?
I didn t feel that way. But I think it s probably very individual. Everybody is so different. When a client hires you, they usually know what they want. It s very rare that they re juggling between two people as to who s going to get the job. I think they have a good idea of what they want and then it s a matter of is that one too expensive? . It s a matter of price I think. No-one knows what the other one makes. That could be a big deal for some of them. Or it used to be a big deal who started shows. Who was the first one to come out. It s such a silly thing. It doesn t really matter.
Does the level of your celebrity bother you?
A little bit, but there s nothing I can do about it, really. A lot of people when they re young say they think they want to be famous. It wasn t like that for me. I wanted to be in the public eye, but I wanted to be famous for writing a major piece of music, or writing a poem or a book. That kind of notoriety would be a much nicer thing. And I don t feel I have a problem where I can t go anywhere or I can t do anything. I don t feel stuck in it entirely. And for me the big test of that was going back to school so late.
Surely that was difficult going to NYU when you were so easily recognisable?
No. It was totally fine. There were a few young journalism majors who wanted to do a story on me and I d always say no.
Did you avoid all the fame stuff when you went back to college?
Yes, I did. I thought it wasn t the best thing. I wanted to blend in.
Does your fame make relationships difficult as well?
I ve had these two long-term relationships. I ve never really been single. Is that what you mean? Male relationships or relationships in general?
Both actually. Friends and lovers.
Em . . . a lot of my friends I ve had since I was really young. They re fine. My family a lot of times they don t like it. My sister that s here with me now, we go to the movies, say, and people stare. They act as though you don t exist, and they ll stand this close to you, and they ll talk to their partners about Is that Christy Turlington? Is it not? I think it is. And you re standing right there!! I ve learned to become a mute. And if you re with someone they ll usually get that vibe. And they feel it really strongly and it s very uncomfortable. It s a very weird fishbowl kind of vibe. My mum likes it actually. She thinks it s really glamorous and if I ve ever complained about it she s like what are you complaining about? It s great! I think she kind of lives a bit vicariously through my thing.
How about relationships with lovers?
I have a boyfriend, but we re not at a place where we re going to buy things together (smiles). It s something you do when you have a family and where you want life to be a bit different. And I m not really ready for that yet.
Do you want kids?
I do. I love kids but I have a few friends that are having a difficult time having them. So I m starting to think of it more as a miracle than most people do. Most people expect that they re going to have children but they forget what a miracle that is. You can t just assume you re going to have children. You should think about it. It s like the biggest decision of your life. I don t just assume I will. I like children. But for me the more important thing is a really good relationship first and if my relationship is that, or becomes that, then children will be the next step.
Does your boyfriend work in your industry?
My boyfriend s an actor. But it s a different industry. He s quite private and low-key as well. We both have a very anonymous kind of life. We don t go to many things together. We have quite a normal life. He lives in LA. That s kind of a drag the long-distance thing. But I m quite used to it too. We ve been together for six years and there s always been that distance. For a while, with me in school, it was actually kind of nice because I could really concentrate when I was on my own. Now we re at a place where we re thinking OK, how much longer? . It s nearly 3,000 miles away. There s long-distance and there s long-distance!
Do you still travel much?
Not so much anymore. When I went back to school I didn t travel very much. Since I graduated in May I ve flown quite a bit. Maybe for two days to London. That s quite exhausting. But it s different now. When I do it, I m not with lots of models and I m not coming from another job where I m exhausted. I can come to London and I can go and see a play. When I go to Paris, I go and see an opera. I m really into doing cultural things now. I feel like, for so many years I didn t really take advantage of some of the places I was in. I didn t have the energy! It s hard to go and see a four-hour opera at the end of a day s work.
Have you ever been stalked?
No. Naomi s had stalkers though.
So you ve been lucky . . .
Well, I had some weirdo in London, he s a taxi-driver or something, who sends me the craziest letters. But I usually don t see them. They come somewhere else and they don t show them to me. But he writes very tiny script. He ll know when I come through London, which is weird. But I ve never met him and I don t think I would. I don t think he d recognise me anyway. I ve attracted teenage girls or art students that like to send me portraits. Some of them are very frightening. I ve been done as the Medusa several times. I ve been sent busts of things, crazy things.
What s been the highlight of your career or life to date? Aside from getting to meet me today, of course!
Yeah (laughs). This is the highlight. There s nothing like the present! Em, maybe going to college was the highlight. I think that modelling actually made me go back to school. I think it made me feel I needed to do something a little more real. I didn t like school until I actually wasn t in it and then, when I realised what it was like to just be a model, it gave me something to focus on and something to talk about.
You climbed Kilimanjaro not so long ago.
I ve wanted to climb that mountain for eight years and it took me a while to get it together but it s a cool thing to actually do what you say. And school gave me the confidence to do that. I think I m not so much proud that I went to school. That s not the hard thing. But I think it is hard when you re older and also when you don t have to go. It was a really pure way for me to go to school because it was completely just a growing process.
Did you study English Literature?
Yes. I studied American Literature actually. I m a big fan of Faulkner. I studied Faulkner for a semester and then I studied Hemingway for the second they are very, very different but they re often taught together.
Are you religious at all?
Yes. I m a practising Catholic.
Do you go to mass every week?
Not every week, but most weeks. I have a really great little church in my neighbourhood in the West Village that I go to. It s called St.Josephs. They know everyone by name when you go to get your Eucharist . . . It s really very personal and nice. I m not like a stuck Catholic. And a lot of my studies were religious oriented. I studied religion comparatively. East, Taoism, Confucianism. Islam fascinates me.
Was your Kilimanjaro trip an attempt to get closer to God in any way?
Maybe. Hemingway said that s what climbing Kilimanjaro means. There are lots of names for it but the actual summit is called Uhuru, which means liberation. So I thought of it in a Buddhist context at some point. But, yes, it was a bit of a pilgrimage for me, like a walking meditation. It was cool.
What does it look like from the top?
It s the largest free-standing mountain in the world. It s volcanic, so the top is very flat. So you can t see it as you climb up it. It s always quite hazy. I think halfway up was when I first started to be able to see the real thing. You d get up in the night to go to the bathroom or something and there it would be, without clouds or anything, and it s just so powerful. And then at the very top you re on this flat piece, probably a couple of acres, and you can see down into the crater on one side and on the other side there s a straight drop off. It was really peaceful but freezing cold at the top.
Are you aware that you re namechecked in American Beauty?
I know, yeah. I didn t know I was until I was actually in there. I saw it in the afternoon and I got really embarrassed. No-one seemed to know. For a name to pull, I wouldn t have thought mine was the obvious one in that kind of line. I would have thought Cindy Crawford would have been more appropriate.
Are you complimented by that kind of thing?
No. That s a weird thing. I ve been mentioned in a couple of movies. There s another I never did see called Rounders two years ago, with like Matt Damon and Ed Norton and they re like gamblers and they have some comment about me too. It s a bit derogatory actually. So it s funny that in the last couple of years since I feel quite removed and I m not as visible as I was, I m getting these weird mentions.
Isn t that just a by-product of the fact that you are a part of popular culture at this stage?
I think once you become a piece of pop culture it s very limiting. I took a course on Pop Culture in NYU, by the way, and I was thinking please don t bring up supermodels! Luckily, they didn t! We talked about Madonna, though. We talked about certain texts that would have been the pop culture of their time. Students are so harsh sometimes. So it was cool to study pop culture, and get an idea of what they thought. Fortunately I didn t come up. That would have felt . . . intrusive or something.
What s the most intrusive thing that s ever happened to you?
On my Graduation Day they had paparazzi. That was a real drag. A month before my Graduation, a PR person rang to ask if I would be going. And she said if you are going, we have to structure something. I said I didn t see the need for that. I said, if I have to do something for the press I d rather say I m not coming. And they said they couldn t lie about it.
So what happened?
It was very intrusive. We did the whole thing in Washington Square Park and we had to walk down the road. And they were standing nearby. And I did get a security person for that. He was very low-key. He stood far away and he just kind of hung around. I didn t want him to walk next to me. I was with my classmates. And they re all young. But they were really cool and completely protected me. It was suggested in the paper that I had a bunch of bodyguards and that the students were really disrupted because of it. But that wasn t the case at all. The paparazzi were the disruptive ones.
Do you have a motto in life?
Not really. This is the last chance for a big quote, isn t it? (laughs). I must say I m a pretty positive person. But at the moment I m thinking about letting people have a bit of space and not putting them in a box not to judge things based on what I see. Everybody has so much more going on. And I m very much into choices like at every given moment you have the choice to do the higher thing or the lower thing and I try to take the higher thing. I ve realised that even with the horrible things in life, there is the opportunity to do something good out of it. That s what I learned with my dad s death. It gave me the idea to do something with anti-smoking stuff. It s harder for people who are already smoking but for the younger people who are thinking about it, I can help there, I think.