Cara Delevingne scored her first solo cover of Vogue—she's appeared on the cover before with two other Instagram stars—for the publication's July issue, and she used the platform to talk about her lifelong struggle with depression and how leaving the modeling industry might have saved her life.
Delevingne details a childhood spent with a mother who was addicted to heroin and her own battle with depression, which started when she was 15. "I was hit with a massive wave of depression and anxiety and self-hatred, where the feelings were so painful that I would slam my head against a tree to try to knock myself out," she said.
Her early days in the modeling industry were filled with stress, which manifested itself in fainting spells and severe psoriasis. She also cops to playing the role of the life of the party. "I’d probably have done more drugs back then if I hadn’t been working like mad," she admits.
Her work in the modeling industry eventually led Delevingne to consider suicide. "I just wanted to end it," she recalls. "I had a way, and it was right there in front of me. And I was like, I need to decide whether I love myself as much as I love the idea of death." Now, Delevingne is turning her focus to acting and music, a direction that she says "saved her."
The ascendant actress shares some of her horror stories from working in the modeling industry. She endured horrible casting directors, like a women at Burberry who only said to her, "Turn around, go away;" "pervy men, never trust a straight photographer at a test shoot", she advises; and controlling agents. "My agents told me what to do, and I did it" she says. "When I got in trouble, they told me off."
Delevingne also digs in on the modeling industry again. "The thrill of acting is making a character real," the Paper Towns star says. "Modeling is the opposite of real. It’s being fake in front of the camera.” Delevingne, who has seven acting gigs lined up, including a huge sci-fi flick and future DC blockbuster Suicide Squad, also compares the industry to a "dysfunctional family... The second you’re out of it, you’re like, What the hell just happened?"
You can read the full Vogue story here. Check out Delevingne's cover with the publication above.
